International Human Rights and Local Courts by Tømte, Aksel; Riyadi, Eko;

Short description:

This book addresses how international human rights law can be applied at the domestic level through a case study of the Indonesian judiciary. It discusses the position of human rights within specific areas of Indonesian law: constitutional law, criminal law and private law. It also incorporates international comparative perspectives.

Long description:

This book addresses the technicalities of how international human rights law can be applied at the domestic level through a case study of the human rights methodology of the Indonesian judiciary. Numerous international human rights treaties have been ratified by States parties all around the world. However, local implementation has proven a difficult task for national authorities with every State struggling to realize rights to varying degrees. This reveals a gap between the standards of human rights as envisaged by the law and those experienced by rights holders at the local level. This work analyses how Indonesian courts interpret and apply human rights. It discusses the position of human rights within specific areas of Indonesian law: constitutional law, criminal law and private law. It analyses how courts have dealt with specific cases within these fields of law. Its key contribution lies in its detailed attention to the role of the Indonesian judiciary in implementing human rights, as well as to the influence of international law, and the role that actors other than the judiciary play in this process. It also incorporates international comparative perspectives. The book will be of particular interest to human rights scholars concerned with national judiciaries’ role in human rights implementation, and to scholars, judges, civil society actors and legal practitioners working with law and human rights in Indonesia.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Table of Contents:

Foreword;  Introduction;  1. Judicial Methodology for the Application of International Human Rights Law;  2. Bringing the Law to Life: Judicial Operationalisation of International Human Rights Law in the Domestic Sphere;  3. Philosophical Foundations for Considering Human Rights in Judgements in Indonesia;  4. Institutionalization of Human Rights Standards in Indonesia;  5. The Judiciary and Human Rights Constitutionalism;  6. The Relationship between Human Rights and Criminal Law: A Human Rights-based Criminal Justice System;  7. Human Rights Legal Reasoning in Private Cases;  Epilogue;  Index