Law
Midterm test
“The influence of Common Law and Civil Law on Indonesia´s Legal Tradition”
Natascha Krauss 3.11.2014
Table of content
1. Development of Indonesia´s Legal Tradition
2. Civil Law
3. Common Law
4. Influences and Impacts of Civil and Common Law
1. Development of Indonesia´s Legal Tradition
This paper is supposed to outline how civil law and common law influenced Indonesia´s Legal tradition. In order to be able to analyze this state of affairs it has to be clarified what the Indonesian legal tradition is and what it states. It is true that the question about the issue of “law and development” are impossible to be separated from the characteristics of the legal system in each country. Therefore to understand the legal system of Indonesia one has to be aware of its legal system. Prior to the advance of foreign colonists to Indonesian land, peoples of Indonesian had its own legal tradition. Indoensia´s legal tradition is the tradition rooted in, developed by, accepted by, and applied within the life of the nation of Indonesia. The Adat Law is the Indonesian genuine legal tradition. It´s objectives are security, peace and harmony of the community. Deductive the main function of adat law are to remain peace, security and harmony as well as to prevent disorder. Under the adat law the main function of sanction is to recover the harmony that has been disturbed. Adat law performance its existence within the society by providing rules and sanctions and by enforcement procedure.
Dutch presence and subsequent occupation of Indonesia for 350 years has left a legacy of Dutch colonial law, largely in the Indonesia civil code. Following the independence in 1945, Indonesia began to form its own modern Indonesian law, not developing it from scratch, but modifying precepts of existing laws. Dutch legal decisions maintain some authority in Indonesia through application of the concordance principle. After