Controversial law enactment in Indonesian law is not to be separated from law upholding management system. A number of legal facts in general are caused by people distrust in judicial authority, one of the causes is verdicts that have not been fair as expected by justice seekers.
Fence M. Wantu, S.H., M.Hum, lecturer of Universitas Negeri Gorontalo, said that the various criticisms showed the distrust in law upholding done by judges in producing verdicts for civil cases. The verdicts often raise cynicism from members of the public as seen in the complaints saying that these do not reflect legal certainty, justice and benefit.
“Verdicts produced by judges should ideally meet the aspect of legal certainty, justice and benefit. In practice, however, not a few verdicts have not met those aspects,” he said in his open doctoral exam at Faculty of Law UGM on Tuesday (1/3).
In his dissertation entitled the Role of Judge in Meeting Legal Certainty, Justice and Benefit in Civil Court, Fence said that judge's professionalism and good morale would produce verdicts with legal certainty, justice and benefit. Quality and integrity are much required in this case. The increase of quality is significant as verdicts that have legal certainty, justice and benefit as well as honesty can only be produced by someone who has legal knowledge, which is developing at any time.
Fence said, in practice, emphasis on legal certainty principle will tend to maintain written laws of existing positive law. Emphasis on justice principle may mean that it should take into account the laws among the community, including customary laws and unwritten laws. Judges with their legal considerations should accommodate all regulations existing among the community when they choose the justice principle as the basis for making verdicts. “Meanwhile, emphasis on benefit has more economic nuance. The basis of this thinking is that law is made for human beings, therefore, legal purposes should be useful for human beings,” he explained.
The husband of Sri Sunarti said that there were a number of obstacles facing judges in realising legal certainty, justice and benefits in civil trials. Those include judge appointment that does not refer to professional norms, lack of education and legal training for judges, the low morale of judges, and weak control from government and community.
A number of measures to be taken to resolve the obstacles faced by judges in civil trial are, among others, by restructuring existing structure and authorities, including qualified human resource recruitment. “Furthermore, making verdicts that are more just, having more legal certainty and benefit. “Other measures are to increase legal upholding by resolving civil cases in court based on legal principle and good trials, in which the principle is made the main base for the judge to resolve the case,” said the UGM 1,350th doctor who passed with honours.