The Judicial Commission announced the results of its review of judicial profession, and its findings are not encouraging. According to The Jakarta Post, 70-80% of judges had not applied judicial procedures properly.
However, the report is a bit confusing in that is critiques judges for applying procedural rather than substantive justice standards. I heard similar complaints from colleagues in Indonesia, particularly when wealthy defendants received light punishments for large crimes and poor defendants were sentences harshly for trivial offenses. Still, it's not clear how giving judges more discretion under a substantive justice standard ameliorates this problem. If anything, it might increase opportunities for corruption.
The KY also revealed that complaints fell from 1,710 in 2011 to 1,482 in 2012, and that more judges were being punished.
Critics agree that much of Southeast Asia desperately needs judicial reform and rule of law. Yet, there is remarkably little comparative scholarship on law and legal institutions in the region. In this blog, I'll follow constitutional developments in Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
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