Challenges of Legal Higher Education in the 4.0 Era
Prof Dr Sulistyowati Irianto
There are various reasons why law higher education has to respond to rapid changes in society in the era of Industry Revolution 4.0, at a time when legal development can hardly keep pace with it, mainly due to political constraints.
Law higher education must play an important role in facing the development of legal practices that require new solutions and thinking, and it has to be transformed with students. Legal certainty is important, but it should not leave the context of the substance of public justice. Nevertheless, the law is not always synonymous with the substance of justice. What kind of contributions are needed for future legal education so that law schools and their civitas can play a role in creating a strong legal state, but at the same time have a public justice perspective?
Legal questions and issues must be explained based on basic knowledge and legal dogma, but that is no longer enough. Crime is rising and to prove them requires the help of science and technology because punishment must be based on findings during questioning and investigation so as not to be wrong in punishing people. Meanwhile, legal development policies to provide access to justice for vulnerable groups, women and children, require a social science and humanities approach. Also, to produce law that is beneficial to the economy, for example, input from economic disciplines is needed.
The need originating from the community shows that legal studies must be open to cross-scientific thinking. There is no need for legal academics to worry about losing their paradigmatic character because the assistance of various other sciences will even enrich the legal science.
Openness to interdisciplinary legal studies has its legitimacy in its own legal epistemology. Law consists of two major parts. The first is the science of dogma and the basic legal concept; and second is the science of legal reality. The accommodation of law students who study society, as well as science and technology, can be placed in the science of legal reality. Universities in other countries have long developed lectures on "law and science", "law and technology", "law and medicine", or "economic analysis of law". Likewise, interdisciplinary collaboration in legal and social sciences-humanities has long given birth to new branches of science, socio-legal studies.
University autonomy with a credit system in Indonesia must provide a wide choice of lectures. Students must be given space to gain knowledge that can improve their skills as law graduates. However, in the future they will become policy makers in the legal field that are not sterile from the political, cultural, economic, scientific and technological context.
Science and technology
Openness to science and technology for legal circles is unavoidable. First, driven by the need for legal reform programs. In general, throughout the world, the problems faced by the community regarding the judicial process are delays, lack of access and corruption (Reiling, 2009). Information technology (IT) will support and ensure good administrative management and judicial processes. The dark period of the judicial processes, where nepotism, collusion and corruption undermined the authority of the court (Pompe, 2012), should not be repeated.
IT is also needed to present evidence in court through the use of videos, audio, electronic reporting, video conference for witnesses and file storage. In short, all decision-making processes in the court require IT (Reiling, 2009).
Second, a massive shift occurs when 1 million conventional jobs will be lost because they will be replaced by artificial intelligence and robots, including the legal profession, such as notaries and advocates. A large legal firm will collapse because the corporation no longer has to pay the expensive advocate services, which are replaced by digital applications; meanwhile, small law firms will merge (Susskind, 2012). However, 1.7 million new professions will be created. Will we accept these challenges with new openness and initiative?
However, shifting occurs in a plural society that causes technological disparities. Even though it has led to digital technology, there are still people in various regions that live with simple technology. How modern law can coexist with customary law and tradition?
Benchmarking
At present, Dutch law, which is rooted in Indonesian law, has developed in another direction. Jurisprudence is considered an important source of law, in addition to legal codification. There emerges an effort to bring legal certainty closer to community justice. Jurisprudence from important cases in the Netherlands becomes a reference and discussion material in various lectures in law schools.
There is cooperation between law schools and law enforcement institutions and the parliament. Law is not only discussed as dead texts (black letters), but is integrated with new legal issues that cannot be isolated from social and scientific developments. Enforcement of the rule of law remains firm while accommodating the development of new justice-based laws.
Students of Dutch law schools not only learn the basic concepts and legal dogma, but also understand the laws that live through the judge\'s decision. There is always a gap between the text of the law and the law, which really exists in the community. The text of the law still contains ideals and idealism, which aim to protect the community, but is not yet becoming a living law. To become a living law, legal texts must be tested in cases of dispute, and the judge\'s decision on the dispute is the living law.
It is important for law students to study court decisions. To what extent the current court ruling is developing, whether the verdict is qualified enough because it contains a new breakthrough in justice. On the contrary, in what context does a court ruling show that the judges simply put themselves simply as the loudspeakers of the law.
Curriculum
The community demands that law schools give birth to legal professionals with strong basic knowledge and legal skills; at the same time they have to be able to build a culture of justice. Uphold the rule of law, without abandoning public justice. Is the curriculum ready? It seems that the legal curriculum is now dominated by compulsory lectures on dogma and the legal basis. This is how its description is, even though it does not represent all law schools.
S-1 students are required to take 144 semester credit units (SKS), consisting of 100 compulsory school lectures (SKS), 21 compulsory university credits, 4 SKS for theses, and the remaining 19 credits for compulsory majors, leaving only 6-9 credits for elective lecturers.
The opportunity for students to take elective courses is very minimal, even though there are currently many humanitarian and social problems that require legal knowledge. At least in the chosen lecture hall the science of legal reality can be sown, namely interdisciplinary legal studies, which come into contact
with contemporary social sciences, humanities, science and technology. The off class lecture method has become a necessity to see legal practices in the field.
The good and bad practice of law can be traced to the substance taught by law higher education. The legal science can no longer be confined to past academic romanticism, and confirmed in an administrative-bureaucratic higher education regime which is rigid and difficult to change. If legal scientists can collaborate extensively with other scientists, government agencies, industry, and community activists, their existence will increasingly be felt by justice seekers. The community thirsts for legal literacy, advocacy and legal assistance. (Sulistyowati Irianto, Legal Anthropology Professor, School of Law, University of Indonesia)
