ALSA 2025 meeting

This article reappraises Jean Carbonnier’s Sociologie Législative as a resource for understanding the legislative process in Indonesia. One of the leading figures of French legal thought, Carbonnier considered the law not a closed, rationalist system, but a social practice enmeshed in cultural and moral conditions. His Sociologie Législative theory views law as the result of social negotiation and informal influence (infra-droit), as opposed to a technical or politically neutral mechanism.
However, even though it has been the seminal writing on continental legal thought, notably but not limited to French thought, Carbonnier’s work is hardly yet explored in Anglophone scholarship and entirely unnoticed in the Indonesian legal literature This linguistic and geographical gap is unfortunate, especially given the structural similarities between the Indonesian and French legal systems, both rooted in civil law traditions that prioritize legislation as a primary legal source. Yet, the Indonesian setting is also uniquely complex: legal pluralism, competing religious and customary norms, and the fragmented nature of the state.
This study explores how Jean Carbonnier’s Sociologie Législative conceptualizes the legislative process, how it differs from other socio-legal theories, and to what extent it can be meaningfully applied to Indonesia’s plural and postcolonial legal context. It also examines the theoretical and practical challenges of adopting a European framework in a setting shaped by religious, customary, and political negotiations. Methodologically, the researcher applies a doctrinal-comparative approach by examining acts, explanatory notes, and judicial decisions as well as by exploring critical literature in legal theory. It suggests that a return to Carbonnier’s legislative sociology may provide new insights as to how legal norms are contested in Indonesia, as well as what a re-contextualization of such a theoretical tool in the context of the current complex legal world requires.