Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih giving a lecture during the inauguration of the mini courtroom smart board at the North Sumatera Muhammadiyah University, Friday (3/3/2023). Photo by Yuwandi.

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(MKRI) — The Constitutional Court (MK) has the strategic authority of judicial review of laws. Many petitioners are young, some of them university students, said Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih in her lecture on “Enforcing the Constitution through Modern and Trusted Judiciary” during the inauguration of the mini courtroom smart board on site at the North Sumatera Muhammadiyah University (UMSU), Medan on Friday, March 3, 2023.

“The Court has a highly strategic authority. The one it exercises the most frequent is the judicial review of laws. Today there is a tendency of young people filing judicial review petitions,” she said.

She said that laws may have lawmaking and substance issues. Young people today have a lot of concern over those issues. “They interact a lot and may feel constitutional issues. So, they bring them to the Court, not to their lecturers,” she said.

She added that the number of judicial review cases has kept increasing, especially with the promulgation of new laws. These new laws took the public’s interest, so naturally so does judicial review of laws.

Of course, she continued, they must study whether there is any constitutionality issue with those laws.

“So, the issue could be because they believe the lawmaking process is not in line with provisions in the Constitution, which are then passed on to the lawmaking law, or because its substance is problematic,” she said.

Justice Enny also explained the process to file a judicial review petition, which can be done online or on site. The mini courtroom smart board, she said, is the Court’s effort to provide access to justice.

“(To provide more access to justice) to the public means that they do not always have to come to the Constitutional Court in person when arguing their constitutional impairment. They can, for example, argue it in Court from UMSU or wherever the Court provides such a facility,” she explained.

She believes the smart board is part of online dispute resolution, since now the facilities have now been available in 52 universities, previously only 42. This means the Court has grown closer to the people who would like to protect their constitutional rights.

“What must be done is improvement at universities so that this facility would not be a mere object, but something that allows interaction. Sometimes when providing access to justice, the Court faces justice seekers who do not understand how to litigate in the Court. The university could provide them with legal aids,” she said.

Use of Mini Courtroom Smart Board

UMSU law faculty dean Faisal said in his remarks that the smart board is not only used for learning, but also to help litigants attend remote hearings for the election results dispute cases.

“[Thank God], in 2023 UMSU also received one of the [smart board] facilities from the Constitutional Court to help the resolution of [election results] disputes. [I] hope election organizers, observers, political parties, and other parties related to election results disputes, with the rector’s permission, can be facilitated to litigate online at UMSU,” he said.

Meanwhile, deputy rector I Muhammad Arifin said he had learned more about the Court. “The Constitutional Court was born out of the desire for a modern constitutional court. It was accommodated by the third amendment to Article 24 of the 1945 Constitution. Along with the Supreme Court, it is part of the judicial power,” he said.

Author       : Utami Argawati
Editor        : Lulu Anjarsari P.
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

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

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