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Review of constitutional law expert Richard Albert’s book with Constitutional Justices I Dewa Gede Palguna and Saldi Isra, Friday (29/11) at the Constitutional Court. Photo by Humas MK/Gani.

JAKARTA, Public Relations of the Constitutional Court—The book review of Constitutional Amendments by constitutional law expert Richard Albert, who graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, the United States, was organized by the Constitutional Court (MK) and Airlangga University on Friday (29/11/2019) at the Constitutional Court. Constitutional Court officials, constitutional law academics from various ministries and agencies, as well as Constitutional Justices I Dewa Gede Palguna and Saldi Isra and author Richard Albert attended the event.

"We are grateful to Richard Albert for presenting his latest work Constitutional Amendments. This is indeed an interesting issue in Indonesia because there is now a discourse to continue amending the Constitution for the fifth amendment," said Justice Saldi Isra when opening the event.

Richard Albert\'s latest book, Saldi said, when read carefully can be an initial discussion for many parties who are concerned about issues of amending the Constitution. "Because this book gives instructions on how to change the Constitution. This book is important because not many scholars give special attention to changes to the Constitution. This book is the first step for Richard to learn about changes to the Constitution in Indonesia," said Justice Saldi.

Head of the Center for Information and Communication Technology Budi Achmad Djohari said that this book review was motivated by the increasingly widespread discourse of the 1945 Constitution among politicians, legal practitioners, academics, nongovernmental organizations, state administrators, and other parties concerned with institutions and constitutional system in Indonesia.

"The Registrar and the Secretariat General of the Constitutional Court have a moral obligation to at least provide knowledge and understanding to the public regarding matters about the Constitution that need to change or not from various aspects," said Budi.

Constitutional Justices I Dewa Gede Palguna said the book was so interesting, very systematic, comprehensive but easy to understand. "The Constitution is the resultant of various political, economic, and social forces when the Constitution was adopted. Therefore, constitutional amendment is a necessity. An American law expert said the two-hundred-year-old United States Constitution being applied to the present generation is scandalous," he explained.

Therefore, he added, this book is important because it discusses constitutional amendment procedures. "Very few people pay attention, like a museum that is not well-managed. The basic questions in this book are often simple: how do you make changes to the Constitution? The questions are simple, but there are many complicated problems in it and that is what is described in this book," Justice Palguna said.

Changes to a written constitution could occur outside the procedures set out in the constitution itself. "That is interesting and is explained in this book. So the problem is more fundamental when the amendment turns out to be more basic. So Richard Albert said, it\'s so difficult to classify whether a very fundamental change can be called an amendment, violation, or replacement of the constitution," Justice Palguna added.

Justice Saldi Isra responded that a systematic collection of scientific articles with the same issues would produce a book like Richard Albert\'s latest work. "What are the benefits? Actually, the materials used as material for this kind of book have been read by experts in their fields because there is no way a journal will publish an article that does not pass a strict review. The way Professor Richard Albert wrote his new book inspired us to then collect our works in serious journals or papers, eventually becoming whole works," he added.

Justice Saldi also said that Richard Albert actually wanted to return to the formal amendment process designed in the Constitution. "Because in theory, constitutional amendment can be done in various ways. There are formal amendments, where changes are made based on the provisions stipulated in the constitution itself. So [Albert] in his book said the article about the Constitution became one of the most important parts of the Constitution itself," he explained.

In general, the book Constitutional Amendments by Richard Albert contains the first comprehensive study materials on the rules for amending the constitution. In addition, this book is the first study to identify analytical and theoretical identification of the changing traditions of the Constitution in the world.

"The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia can actually get input and experience from other countries related to the constitutional amendment process and the results that occur," Albert said. (Nano Tresna Arfana/LA)

Translated by: Yuniar Widiastuti

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