Hukum Untuk Manusia? Gugatan Satjipto Rahardjo

Abstract

This review examines the book "Legal Science in the Midst of the Flow of Change" by Prof. Dr. Satjipto Rahardjo, a fundamental work that challenges the dominance of legal positivism in Indonesia. This paper highlights the author's main criticism of modern law, which he considers to have become alienated from its social roots, become rigid, and trapped in procedural formalism (gejuridiseerd recht). The analysis shows how Satjipto Rahardjo offers a way out through a more sociological and progressive legal approach, which places humans, not rules, at the center of law. Key concepts such as "social legal thinking," "legal pluralism," and, ultimately, "beyond the call of rules," are discussed as solutions to return law to its true purpose, namely achieving substantive justice and social happiness. This review concludes that the book is an intellectual manifesto whose relevance is increasingly strong, and is required reading for anyone who yearns for a more humane face of law