14 - Lawyering in Indonesia’s Religious Courts: Legal Aid, Procedural Justice, and Pragmatism

Summary

This chapter analyses the practice of lawyering in Indonesia’s religious courts and focuses on the role that lawyers play in the creation of justice. The chapter also seeks to explore the extent to which the state’s programme of providing legal aid has contributed to the realization of justice for litigants, particularly poor people. The chapter argues that while some litigants in Indonesian religious courts appear to benefit from lawyer strategies tailored to particular disputes, there is evidence that lawyer pragmatism, in which lawyers are more concerned with fees for their legal assistance to litigants than with respect for law and justice, interferes with the accomplishment of justice for the client. The bureaucratic orientation of first instance religious courts, one that prioritizes procedural justice, also acts as a barrier to justice, because it limits lawyers’ contributions to a well-informed legal decision. Bureaucratization also poses obstacles to access to justice for poor persons in the context of legal aid, because undue demands for documentation from legal aid applicants creates opportunities for corruption and cuts off the most vulnerable applicants.