The Chronicles of a Capitalist Lawyer

The verdict for drunk driver Afriani Susanti has been issued earlier this week: 15 years in prison for killing nine pedestrians in an infamous traffic accident. She was deemed guilty not of intentional murder, but of reckless and fatal driving.   I won't discuss the verdict from legal perspective here. 15 years in prison is the maximum sanction she can get if she is deemed guilty of intentional murder. What I am more curious about is the way to find the proper penal sanctions for various criminal activities. In my January 2012 article about Afriani, I argued she must receive higher penalty — by categorizing her crime as an intentional murder — in order to reduce the incentives for other drivers to drive recklessly. At that time however, I did not think deeply about the most efficient sanction for her crime. I only followed standard Law and Economics doctrine that a sanction of multiple crimes should always be clearly differentiated with a single crime, simply be

Don't you just hate the fact that many politicians seem very inconsistent in making their political choices? Supporting candidate A today, B the next day. I still vividly remember a politician who was criticizing one of the independent candidates in July's Jakarta gubernatorial election for the candidate's lack of experience, and then changed his position to be a firm supporter of that candidate once his own candidate failed to join the election process. We see similar things happening now when some political parties, who previously attacked the incumbent candidate, decided to support the incumbent after tragically losing the first round of the election. Is this really a bad behavior? Should we condemn such act? I don’t think so. Far from being a reckless act, the change in political choices made by these politicians is simply rational. They would be stupid if they did otherwise. Why?   Surviving in the business of politics requires similar skills th

Here is my latest post (in Indonesian language) at ILUNI-FHUI site: Revisiting the Function of Penal Sanctions . The post discusses the use of Law and Economics tool in analyzing the role and use of penal sanctions and how we can shape our penal sanctions to meet their primary purposes.

For a couple of weeks, we have been bombarded by news on the use — or misuse — of religion as a part of Jakarta's gubernatorial election campaign. Even the Islamic Council of Ulema's (MUI) Jakarta branch joined the fray by issuing a fatwa that people have the obligation to choose their leaders based on their religion. This, of course, attracts a lot of comments. Some view such attempt as stupid or hypocrite, others view it as acceptable and necessary in accordance with their religious practice. From political and economics point of view, using this strategy seems rational. Like it or not, this is a sensitive issue where opinions might be fairly distributed between the pros and cons. If you can use it to gain more voters from certain side, why not?    But, from legal point of view, should we prohibit the use of this strategy? I don't think so. Not only that it would be a very paternalistic policy, there are hundreds of other reasons that can be used by a

The recent Olympics badminton scandal is very interesting. From a legal perspective, the answer is quite clear. The players deliberately tried to lose against each other, so they breached the Olympic rule of doing their best in each competition. Case closed.    But surely we can’t stop there. Why should we have that kind of rule in the first place? Why should we prohibit the players from choosing a rational strategy when the competition rules allow that possibility? Is this all about sportsmanship? Like in that various martial arts stories where the fighters are always trying to fight fair and square in order to gain the sweetest victory? Or is it something else? As a spectator, I don’t mind if the players deliberately tried to lose in order to gain victory later. The problem is, it seems that I am in the minority group. Like it or not, the idea that sport competitions should be held in accordance with the highest moral principles still lives on until today. And

This is an era where people can spread information anonymously and are able to gain trust from a lot of other people. The million dollar question is: Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I know that some people do not like the fact that these anonymous informants can get many viewers in such an easy way and fear that these viewers will be fooled by distribution of false information. This, however, is an exaggeration.  Like it or not, having anonymous informants is a normal thing in the modern market of information, especially with our telecommunication technological advances.   And in such market, there will be high quality information and low quality information. Trying to have a paternalistic central body to analyze and differentiate each type of information would be very costly. So it would be better to let the people themselves decide whether the information is worth to know or not. Furthermore, it would also be too late to say that anonymous informants are u

We all know the familiar phrase “may the best candidate win” in an election process. Obviously, we really hope that we can get the best leader through such process. Yet in reality, we often fall into a situation where the entire candidates suck and we are forced to vote for the best among the worst, which is still bad. Have you ever wondered why most of the time, getting the best from the bests as our leader is very difficult? Is it actually possible for us to use a meritocratic system where leaders are chosen solely based on their capabilities? The answer might be disappointing. The main problem? We tend to forget that in the modern world, leadership is neither simply a right nor a privilege; it is a job with certain responsibilities. There are costs and benefits involved. Thus, the law of supply and demand will govern the process.     Those who want to be leaders do not necessarily have the needed capabilities. Most of them, if not all, are people who believe that

I always want to do a survey on how Indonesian people perceive the implementation of Shari’a as a part of positive laws. Many surveys have been done on this issue. The problem is, either the questions are too general or only deal with the “famous” provisions of Islamic law. By general, I mean that the question only asks whether a person accepts the implementation of Shari’a without knowing whether he would agree entirely with any kind of implementation or only to a certain degree. By famous, I mean that the question only deals with classical provisions that are well known by many people such as hand cutting for thievery, stoning for adultery, etc. I believe that this kind of survey cannot be used to know precisely whether the respondent fully understand his answer, that he gives his responses based on a good understanding of Shari’a and not just because he doesn’t want to be considered as a religious blasphemer. In this article, I will provide certain guidelines

The title of this article is the main question generated by people who believe that there are certain laws which are derived from God or basic moral principles. Thus, these laws would have a holy status and will be perfect and remain unchanged for eternity.    Unfortunately for them, the answer is no. There is no such thing as a holy law and there is no record that a law can be applied without any changes within the past 2,000 years. Law is a social fact and is always evolving. That’s the reality.   By social fact, I mean that the basic validity of the law is solely determined by social acceptance, namely that the people within a territory, including their legal officials, accept from their internal point of view that a norm has valid authoritative power as a law. How can we know that such acceptance exists? First, we can see such acceptance from how legal officials (such as judges) express the normative aspect of such rules within their opinions/statements. For exa