The Perils of Legal Formalism Litigating Land Conflicts in Indonesia

Under what conditions can courts function as a bulwark against land grabbing? In light of ongoing concerns about corporate land grabbing, studies disagree about how and whether courts can resolve resulting land conflicts. This article addresses this debate, examining how Indonesia’s legal system deals with conflicts between rural communities and palm oil companies. Relying on 18 court judgments, it explores the legal strategies of those communities and individuals threatened by dispossession that have opted to litigate, as well as the protracted nature of the appeals process and the typically formalistic nature of the courts’ verdicts. It is found that judges rarely rule on the merits of a case; rather, they adopt a formalist approach to the law, which prioritises strict procedural correctness. This prompts an argument that the primary obstacle to substantive judicial outcomes and resolutions where land disputes are litigated is not Indonesia’s uncertain land law regime, but the disconnect between the competencies of lawyers representing communities in court and the excessively formalist approach of the judiciary. A vicious cycle has emerged: as legal formalism and an ambiguous legal framework have encouraged judges to rule on procedural grounds, Indonesian land law is being denied a substantive body of jurisprudence.