Aprilia Stefany Leliak, a doctoral candidate in the Doctoral Program in Legal Studies at the UGM Faculty of Law (PDIH FH UGM), along with Sartika Intaning Pradhani and Almonika Cindy Fatika Sari — lecturers in the Department of Customary Law at FH UGM — attended the International Course on Legal Pluralism. The course, which ran from Wednesday, January 8, to Saturday, January 11, 2025, was organized by the Commission on Legal Pluralism in collaboration with the Faculty of Law, Universitas Indonesia (FH UI).
Instructors and participants came from universities and countries across the world, including Leiden University and Wageningen University (Netherlands), the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany), Universidad para el Desarrollo Andino (Peru), the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University (Australia), the University of Cape Town (South Africa), the University of Richmond and the City University of New York (USA), the University of Zambia (Zambia), and Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Trunojoyo, and Universitas Katolik Parahyangan (Indonesia).
The course covered the following topics: (1) an introduction to the concept of legal pluralism; (2) legal pluralism and socio-legal anthropology — intercultural justice in the Global South; (3) family religious law and human rights; (4) customary law (adat law) — interpretation and representation; (5) legal pluralism and the relationship between humans and nature; and (6) methodology — studying legal pluralism in disputes and beyond. In addition to the course content, participants were given a forum to discuss future research plans and visited the Cireundeu Indigenous Village (Kampung Adat Cireundeu) in West Java.
Following the course, the three FH UGM representatives participated in the International Conference on Legal Pluralism, which ran from Sunday, January 12, to Wednesday, January 15, 2025. The conference opened with an overview of legal developments in Indonesia, followed by a series of panels.
Aprilia and Almonika Cindy (Monik) presented their research in the panel Recognition of Customary Justice Systems — a Double-Edged Sword. Aprilia presented "The Urgency of Legal Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Era of Disruption", while Monik delivered "Land and Labor: The Relations of Matrilineal Community and Capitalism in West Sumatra, Indonesia". Sartika, for her part, presented "Adat Law-Making of the Mollo Community: Marble Mining Prohibition and Beard Lichen Collection Restriction" in the panel "Rights, Conflict, and Justice: Engaging with Legal Pluralism in Asia".
At the conference, Rikardo Simarmata, a lecturer at FH UGM, and Adriaan Bedner, a lecturer at Leiden University, co-organized a "Round Table: Transformative Power of Teaching Customary Law (New Style)". Drawing on their jointly authored article, "New Ways of Teaching Adat (Customary) Law at Indonesian Law Schools" — published in The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies and available in an Indonesian translation — they sought to explore participants' experiences with innovation in customary law teaching.
Participants from countries including South Africa, Cameroon, Zambia, the United States, Australia, and India actively shared their own experiences teaching customary law in their respective countries — including the obstacles they face. It became clear that the challenge of teaching customary law in a more contextually grounded way is not unique to Indonesian academics, but is shared by scholars from many different parts of the world.
Author : Sartika Intaning Pradhani (Lecturer at the Department of Customary Law)
