Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T08:53:08.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

from Part II - Comparative Perspectives on Access to Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

Helena Whalen-Bridge
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
Get access

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Role of Lawyers in Access to Justice
Asian and Comparative Perspectives
, pp. 260 - 275
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×