1st Edition
Defending Legal Freedoms in Indonesia The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation and Cause Lawyering in an Age of Democratic Decline
Defending Legal Freedoms in Indonesia provides fresh insights into how cause lawyers navigate political and institutional change, by presenting and analysing the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), the oldest and most influential legal and human rights organisation in Indonesia.
Based on rich ethnographic research, this book charts the developments of the organisation since its founding in 1970, its contribution to the ending of the authoritarian, military-backed New Order (1966-1998), its relative decline in the years following Indonesia’s democratisation and its revival in recent years as Indonesian democracy and human rights come under threat. The author examines the tactics the organisation has used, including show trials and working alongside grassroots communities, organising them and educating them about their rights. It highlights how this organisation flourished more under an authoritarian regime than under democracy and how its present, prominent, adversarial-political version of cause lawyering is playing a leading role in civil society resisting further erosion of democracy and human rights. The book addresses recent democratic erosion under President Joko Widodo, and documents pivotal moments in Indonesia’s contemporary history, such as the ‘Reform Corrupted’ mass demonstrations in 2019, illuminating how democracy shrinks, and how lawyers push back.
The first book on Indonesia’s crucially important cause lawyering, activist lawyers’ group, this book will be of interest to researchers in Asian Law, Indonesian Studies. It is also an essential point of reference for future research in public lawyering in Asia.
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface and acknowledgements
Acronyms and abbreviations
Glossary
PART ONE: CAUSE LAWYERING AND THE BIRTH OF THE LEGAL AID MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA
Chapter 1: Introduction: Cause lawyering and democratic change
Chapter 2: The making of a ‘locomotive of democracy’: Cause lawyers under Soeharto’s New Order
PART TWO: CAUSE LAWYERING IN A TIME OF DEMOCRATIC REFORM AND REGRESSION
Democratic reform and regression: Introduction to Part Two
Chapter 3: Transitions and troubles: Challenges post-Soeharto
Chapter 4: Mobilising the law: New opportunities, new strategies
Chapter 5: Movement building: community organising and legal empowerment
Chapter 6: Accommodation and opposition: Engaging with the state
PART THREE: REVIVAL
Chapter 7: The ‘revival’ of structural legal aid and return as an oppositional force
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Tim Mann is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
“Tim Mann’s Defending Legal Freedoms in Indonesia is an exciting new history and analysis of cause lawyering in Indonesia that sheds new light on challenges to and successes of the major cause lawyering movement there. It provides a framework for thinking about the rocky course of cause lawyering and public interest law more broadly in Asia and beyond, and will become a crucial text for academics and lawyers as they think about these important areas.”
- Mark Sidel, Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“In this outstanding study, Timothy Mann brings alive the many dilemmas and obstacles members of Indonesia’s Legal Aid Institute have encountered when using the legal system to extend and defend democratic rights. As well as providing a definitive account of Indonesia’s most distinguished human rights organisation, Defending Legal Freedoms in Indonesia is packed with valuable insights for scholars and activists anywhere interested in democratic decline and how to resist it.”
- Edward Aspinall, Professor of Politics, Department of Political & Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs
