The Complexity of the Law in Indonesia

Indonesian Law
The Indonesian legal system is complex because it is a confluence of three distinct systems: Adat law, Dutch colonial law and national law co-exist in modern Indonesia. For example, commercial law is grounded upon the Commercial Code 1847 (Kitab UndangUndangHukum Dagang or Wetboek van Koophandel), a relic of the colonial period.  Adat law is less conspicuous. However, some adat principles such as ‘consensus through decision making’ (musyawarah untuk mufakat) appear in modern Indonesian legislation (Tabalujan).

Yet if we go beyond such retrospective descriptions to consider functional categories, a convenient point of departure is the contrast between present-day Indonesian law and what can be reconstructed of law on Java in, say, the late seventeenth century. Again history raises its face in the question of terminology. What does one call the period preceding the relatively short colonial era without implying an inevitable period of European dominance? It is probably termed the same as the first year of the 30-Years War.