Rebuilding the Judiciary in Indonesia : The Special Courts Strategy

TLDR: In this article, the authors evaluate the performance of some of Indonesia's special courts and identify to what extent the special court nature has been relevant to their performance and on this basis formulates four theses.

Abstract: One reform strategy to improve judicial performance has been to establish special courts. While hailed by some as an effective tool, others have pointed at the dangers to ‘sidestep’ the general judiciary in this manner. Indonesia provides an interesting case to examine these claims as in probably no other country have those seeking to reform the judiciary invested so much in special courts. The present paper evaluates the performance of some of Indonesia’s special courts. Its main focus is the administrative courts, as the oldest and most ‘trialled’ of the list. It identifies to what extent the special court nature has been relevant to their performance and on this basis formulates four theses. These are then tested from the experiences with two other special courts: the tax courts and the commercial courts. In the conclusion these findings are summarily related to data of the other special courts. The analysis will demonstrate that it depends on the conditions under which special courts evolve whether they can actually contribute in a positive manner to judicial performance. On the one hand serious problems with access and jurisdiction are associated with some of them, but on the other these courts perform relatively well on political independence and expertise. Carefully considered and introduced, specialisation of courts may be beneficial indeed.