Judicial Authority and the Struggle for an Indonesian Rechtsstaat

The place of law in the state is largely the result of political struggle, which can be understood better by looking at social and political rather than cultural variables. Informed by Weberian models of legitimacy and political structure and by Marxist concepts of class conflict, the article analyzes efforts to establish an Indonesian “law state” in the context of middle-class assaults on patrimonial assumptions of political order. It concentrates primarily on issues that arose in the consideration of a new law on judicial organization and authority. Groups that favored fundamental political and legal change focused on the judiciary as a means of gaining access to and influence in the state and of imposing limits on the exercise of political power. They failed, but the struggle goes on, complicated by strains within the growing middle stratum of the population.