Constitutional Justice Saldi Isra giving a presentation at the APHTN-HAN Legal Drafting Program Batch IV, Tuesday (9/21/2021). Photo by Humas MK/Teguh.

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Tuesday, September 21, 2021 | 17:19 WIB

JAKARTA, Public Relations—On the second day of the technical assistance program (bimtek) on Legal Drafting Batch IV for the Association of Constitutional and Administrative Law Lectures of Indonesia (APHTN-HAN) on Tuesday, September 21, 2021, Constitutional Justice Saldi Isra gave a presentation on “The Procedural Law of Judicial Review.” At the event organized by the Pancasila and Constitution Education Center, 80 APHTN-HAN members and 20 participants from the Constitutional Court were in attendance.

Judicial review of laws is the first authority that the Constitution mandates to the Court, Justice Saldi said. The authority is based on the concept of checks and balances. Under the trias politica concept, the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the state run the country. In this context, judicial review is part of the judicial function to oversee the executive and legislative branches, where the Court asses the constitutionality of laws that the legislatures have formed. Within those branches, an internal check mechanism exists, but it may not work properly and lead to the law violating the Constitution.

“Therefore, an external body outside of those institutions are needed to oversee the process. If any substance is against [the Constitution], the Court will control and assess the potential violation due to the enactment of the law,” he explained.

Therefore, the judicial review serves to assess whether a law has the potential to be unconstitutional. As such, the legislatures will exercise caution when making laws.

Not Only Through Amendments

I Dewa Gede Palguna talked about “Constitutional Interpretation.” He explained that it concerns the methods or strategies to resolve disputes regarding the meaning or implementation of the Constitution. One who studies it tries to find answers about the perspective in which the Constitution is viewed.

“Therefore, constitutional interpretation can be said as a mechanism to find out or ascertain whether the Constitution has actually been implemented in practice in accordance with the meanings therein,” said the former constitutional justice of 2003-2008 and 2015-2020 who has now come back to teaching.

Palguna added that in countries that adopts the concept of constitutional supremacy, the authority to interpret the constitution is granted to the judiciary. It is related to the static and hard-to-change nature of the Constitution.

“Therefore, the Constitution always needs improvement, which not always through amendments but constitutional interpretation through which it can be amended, renewed, and improved to fit the people’s needs,” he said.

On this second day, the participants also listened to a presentation on “The Types, Hierarchy, Functions, and Materials of Laws and Regulations.” The bimtek was planned to run for five days on Monday-Friday, September 20-24, 2021. The participants will be listening to presentations by legal experts on various topics, such as “Harmonizing the Legislation,” “Academic Text Drafting Technique,” “Legal Drafting Technique.” They will also practice legal drafting in 16 groups and present their results in 8 groups at the end of the program.

Writer        : Sri Pujianti
Editor        : Lulu Anjarsari P.
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 10/3/2021 21:52 WIB

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian version, the Indonesian version will prevail.

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