JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IN THE INDONESIAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT’S DECISIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Indonesia's Constitutional Court issued significant decisions on challenges to three crucial laws: the COVID-19 Handling Law, the Job Creation Law, and the Election Law. These decisions, which were based on the substantive justice approach, raised questions over whether the Court's nine justices were driven by judicial activism or influenced by populist pressure and public opinion. The underlying contention of this article is that the Constitutional Court's interpretation concerning a state of emergency and legislation during times of crisis should form a cohesive entity that upholds the primacy of safeguarding the public and ensuring equitable legal certainty for all individuals, as enshrined in the Indonesian Constitution. This article analyzes the impact of judicial activism and populism in addressing the issue of officials who misused or embezzled funds related to Covid-19, ensuring that they can still be held accountable both civilly and criminally. Furthermore, it explores the implications of the conditional annulment of the Job Creation Law and the application of the presidential threshold in elections. During the period of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the context of the Job Creation Law and the presidential threshold, it was imperative for the Constitutional Court's decisions to emphasize the fair and definitive application of the law, irrespective of any influence from judicial activism or populism.