When Law and Morality Collide: The Indonesia’s Halal Act Case for Constitutional Pluralism

• Main Author: Sutrisno, Nandang
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: law and religion; globalization of law; constitutionalism; law and development; Islam
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/apssr/vol23/iss1/3; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/apssr/article/1483/viewcontent/RA_202.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

One of the most debated questions in contemporary legal discourse is the fraught relationship between law and morality. Despite the enormous amount of energy that has been devoted to this question, most of, if not all, the available works have failed to take into account the fact that today’s legal questions have become increasingly bound to be both international and domestic in nature. To make matter worse, the prevailing debate has largely been discussed within the purview of the developed and relatively secular domestic legal setting of the West. It is arguable that they have effectively ignored both the nuances of the question and the interface between international and domestic legal systems have become increasingly important in today’s effort to understand the current legal position. Against this background, this paper is a unique attempt to bring the resulting irreconcilable tension as a result of the growing pressure of the globalization of law on the one hand and the popular demand to maintain national (legal) identity on the other to the fore of the debate. Going further, this paper provides the first attempt to provide a viable theoretical respond to such a challenge. With Indonesia’s 2014 Halal Act as a case in point where collision between international and domestic norms is conceivable, this study highlights the urgency to reconcile the pressure for the globalization of law on the one hand and maintaining the national identity on the other. In so doing, this paper advances a proposal that presses for more acknowledgment of the role of domestic constitutional ordering in the process of international legal development.