Judicial activism of Indonesia’s constitutional court in advancing environmental constitutionalism
Keywords:
Constitutional court, Environmental constitutionalism, Green justice, Indonesia, Judicial ActivismAbstract
The article analyzes the role of judicial activism by Indonesia’s Constitutional Court in advancing environmental constitutionalism amid persistent regulatory fragmentation and development-oriented governance. Although the 1945 Constitution guarantees the right to a good and healthy environment and embeds sustainability as a foundational economic principle, legislative and executive practices have frequently diluted environmental protection through deregulation and weakened participatory safeguards. Using normative legal research grounded in constitutional interpretation, proportionality analysis, and systematic examination of leading Constitutional Court decisions, this study develops an analytical framework to assess judicial activism across four dimensions: procedural, institutional, legislative, and substantive. Methodologically, the study justifies this approach on the premise that environmental constitutionalism operates not only through textual guarantees but also through judicial construction of enforceable norms and state obligations. The findings demonstrate that the Court has played a transformative role by constitutionalizing meaningful public participation, strengthening environmental governance mechanisms, correcting procedurally defective legislation, and articulating substantive ecological limits on economic development based on strong sustainability and precautionary principles. The article’s contribution lin conceptualizing these rulings as a structured pattern of environmental judicial activism rather than isolated decisions, thereby clarifying the Court’s function within Indonesia’s constitutional environmental order. However, structural constraints, particularly implementation gaps, fragmented governance, and legitimacy challenges, continue to limit the practical impact of judicial intervention. The article concludes that while judicial activism cannot substitute for comprehensive environmental governance, it operates as a critical constitutional corrective mechanism that reinforces environmental rights, ecological justice, and the supremacy of the Constitution in Indonesia’s environmental legal system.
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