The Secretary General of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia and representatives from the Court visited Heidelberg with a view of establishing further cooperation
The Max Planck Foundation had the honour of welcoming the Secretary General of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia (Mahkamah Konstitusi Republik Indonesia), Professor Dr M Guntur Hamzah to the Foundation’s offices on 26 November 2019. He was accompanied by Dr Pan Mohamad Faiz, Senior Researcher, Dr Fajar Laksono Head of Public Relations, Immanuel Hutasoit, Head of International Affairs, and Edho Saptiono from the Indonesian Consulate in Germany.
A representative from the Foundation welcomed the delegation on behalf of the Managing Directors and introduced the members of the delegation to the various projects at the Foundation thematically and geographically, including those working specifically with Constitutional Courts in Jordan, Morocco and Mali, as well projects with Supreme Courts and on comparative constitutional law. The delegation had the opportunity to meet with research fellows working in various countries in Asia who then delivered brief presentations on their work in their various project countries and took questions from members of the delegation on themes and topics of interest to the Constitutional Court, particularly related to recent cases and the jurisprudence of the Court, constitutional and comparative law, the law of the sea, transitional justice and legal drafting. The presentations sparked a strong interest and were followed by fruitful discussions amongst all the participants.
The publications team presented on the various publication projects at the Foundation and discussed possible future cooperation with the Court on publications of thematic relevance, and invited members of the Court to submit scholarly contributions to the Foundation’s current set of publications.
The representatives from the Court briefly introduced the functions of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia and its innovative online system of access to judicial information and cases: https://mkri.id.
The Secretary-General expressed a desire to cooperate with the Foundation on topics of particular interest to the Judges of the Constitutional Court, and also on areas of research related to new directions in comparative constitutional law and the jurisprudence of constitutional courts from other jurisdictions. The Foundation’s representative conveyed to the delegation the willingness of the Managing Directors to cooperate with the Court on these areas and that this would be discussed in meetings with the Constitutional Court in the near future.
This meeting follows a series of high-level meetings between the Foundation’s Head of Project and Country Manager and the Constitutional Court, as well as the Foundation’s participation at the recent Symposium on “Constitutional Court and Protection of Social and Economic Rights” organised by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia. The mutual exchange concluded with the Secretary General extending an invitation to the Foundation to Jakarta for exploring possible future collaborations between the two institutions.