Implications of ethics council and administrative court rulings on the status of Indonesian constitution court chief justice
Keywords:
Constitutional court, Constitutional court honorary council, Administrative court, Judicial ethics, Judicial independenceAbstract
A jurisdictional dispute arose in Indonesia after the Constitutional Court's Ethics Council imposed an ethics sanction on Anwar Usman, which was subsequently overturned by the Jakarta State Administrative Court through Decision No. 604/G/2023/PTUN.JKT. The central issue is whether an internal ethics decision of a constitutional court qualifies as a State Administrative Decision subject to administrative judicial review, and what implications such review might have for judicial independence. This study employs doctrinal legal research with statutory, conceptual, and case law approaches. The statutory law approach analyzes the Constitutional Court Law and the State Administrative Court Law, while the conceptual approach examines the doctrine of beschikking in Indonesian administrative law. The case approach evaluates the normative reasoning and institutional consequences of the disputed decision. This study concludes that the Ethics Council's Decision No. 2/MKMK/L/11/2023 constitutes an internal quasi-judicial ethics adjudication and not an administrative action resulting in public law consequences. Therefore, the decision does not meet the criteria for a State Administrative Decision, and the State Administrative Court lacks jurisdiction to overturn it. However, the court's ruling officially reinstates Anwar Usman as a Constitutional Court Justice and raises broader structural tensions regarding the autonomy of judicial ethics enforcement within Indonesia's constitutional system.
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