Thursday 24 January 2013

BUILDING LEGAL COURTESY



Talking about legal courtesy means talking about how law becomes an instrument ruling law subject in relations to other law subjects, according to principles based on good behavior or conduct. On one side, legal courtesy reflects the existence of justice in the law so that the law becomes an instrument ruling behavior of law subjects. Therefore, legal courtesy is combination of justice values inherent in the text of the law and orderly and law-abiding law subjects.

It’s important to feature the discourse of legal courtesy here because numerous issues which should be settled by law have spread to outside law corridor. Brawl, for instance, is an example of action demonstrating bad behavior or misconduct. The brawl results in two issues. Firstly, law, which should become a problem solving instrument can do nothing. Law looses dignity. Secondly, it creates communities violating law that express misconduct intentionally before the public. Brawlers later loose courtesy.

Law is an instrument changing society. Honorable law boosting the birth of civilized society and enforced firmly is proven capable of changing behavior of presidents to become more civilized. In Singapore, for instance, the application of law prohibiting anybody from dropping rests of cigarettes randomly has been proven effective to promote Singapore to become the cleanest country. The simple example indicates that law encourages the birth of a civilized society demonstrated through order in preserving environmental sanitation.

However, legal courtesy is more than it. The legal courtesy should also be viewed from the side of law consistency to realize the goal, wherein the accomplishment is determined heavily by law enforcers. Law, which should create order but is not firm in disciplining people destroying the order surely looses the courtesy. If security apparatuses let brawl continue thus costing lives because they do not want to face risks, such as the possibility of counter attack from brawlers officers or other reasons, the apparatuses actually have taken part in degrading the dignity of law and causing it to loose courtesy.

Legal courtesy may also be observed from economic perspective. Any of the objectives of law is to enforce certainly, called legal certainly. Law not guaranteeing the accomplishment of the goal would become a serious problem and affect the growth of business communities. To the best of our beliefs, legal uncertainly is the main reason discouraging prospective investors to invest their capital in Indonesia. Naturally, law should function to push the acceleration of economic development. If law functions reversely, legal courtesy also covers contribution of law to business in the country. Courtesy becomes important because it is related to justice, namely economic and business opportunity. In this point, legal courtesy may also be called as legal justice or justice-based law.

Any of the other concrete measures in building legal courtesy is to grant extraordinary authority to the anti-graft commission (KPK) in combating corruption. A law is categorized as uncivilized law if the law is powerless against elements (corrupters). If parties have continued to raise their objection to diminish KPPK, it constitutes an effort to enforce legal courtesy because every action toleration corruption must be considered as a form of misconduct.

Business News - October 5, 2012

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