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The Leiden Legacy: Concepts of Law in Indonesia (review)

The Leiden Legacy is a particularly apt title. “Discovery” of Indonesian customary law (adat recht), eloquently defended by Cornelis Van Vollenhoven (1874–1932), and its utilization by the Netherlands East Indies government provoked acrimonious academic and administrative debates both within and between Leiden and Utrecht University schools of thought. More important in long-term perspectives, the legacy is part of the relationship existing between adat law and the nationalist project, one ultimately leading to the creation of the Republic of Indonesia and adat’s ambiguous role in it. The book’s subtitle, Concepts of Law in Indonesia, is less apt. “Concepts” are limited to those which became adat orthodoxy, namely, oral village customary law. Alternatives, as sources of law stemming from the vast corpus of written courtly law or its possibly more useful administrative character, are only mentioned in passing. Organizationally the work is divided into the rise and fall of the adat recht concept. Section A: “The Making of the Myth” reviews its historical construction. More specifically, Chapter 1 introduces Cornelis Van Vollenhoven and his major writings — Misapprehensions about Adat Law and The Indonesian and His Land. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the key issue of land rights versus rights in land and the polemics it generated. Chapter 4 adds the issue of adat criminal law to the more basic controversy over its civil aspects, both of which were becoming accepted by the Netherlands East Indies government during the second quarter of the 19 century.