Reformulation of Living Law or Customary Law in Regional Regulations of Districts/Cities through a Constitutional Approach

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-519-5_40How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Reformulation of Law; Living Law; Regional Regulations; Constitution

Abstract

Local governments, especially district or city governments, have an obligation to maintain and preserve the laws that apply within their communities, particularly customary law. Local governments must provide legal protection so that customary law can be recognized by the wider public and effectively implemented in community units that have long acknowledged its existence. The 1945 Constitution of Indonesia, in Article 18B paragraph (2), recognizes and respects customary law communities, granting authority to local governments to manage regional affairs based on the principle of Regional Autonomy, which provides flexibility for regions to develop independently and competitively. This study discusses the basis for the recognition of customary law communities in district and city regulations and how the acknowledgment of traditional customary rights in these regulations aligns with constitutional principles. Using a juridical normative method, the research emphasizes literature-based analysis through legal instruments, scholarly works, papers, and media related to indigenous communities and customary law regulations. The reformulation of customary law in regional regulations is essential for state recognition of a community’s legal system that existed before the establishment of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia. In this regard, the customary law system must be formally recognized, both in terms of its institutions and traditional rights, reflecting Carl Friedrich von Savigny’s theory that “law is not made but grows and develops with the people,” and Paul Bohannan’s concept of the reinstitutionalization of norms, which emphasizes that living law must be continuously acknowledged and developed within society in accordance with the 1945 Constitution.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Angga Alfiyan
AU  - Mohammad Jamin
AU  - Adriana Grahani Firdausy
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/29
TI  - Reformulation of Living Law or Customary Law in Regional Regulations of Districts/Cities through a Constitutional Approach
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Law, Economics & good Governance (ICLAW 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 504
EP  - 512
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-519-5_40
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-519-5_40
ID  - Alfiyan2025
ER  -