"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen is faced with a cruel alternative: either to lose his morality or to lose his respect for the law.." - Frédéric Bastiat in his masterpiece entitled The Law (1850).

Legal Literacy - In the democratic architecture of rule of law (constitutional democratic state), laws should never be interpreted merely as a collection of articles typed on paper bearing the national emblem. Philosophically and sociologically, law is a manifestation of the general will (volonté générale) which leads to the protection of human rights and the achievement of social justice. However, our contemporary constitutional discourse today is faced with a paradox that is both tragic and dangerous: where does the truth of a legal product lie, if from the embryological process in parliamentary chambers, it has been filled with manipulation, bargaining of oligarchic interests, and public lies? This fundamental question challenges the epistemological basis of the law itself, forcing us to abandon the rigid positivism blinkers, and begin to see beyond the text of legislation towards the dark spaces where the law is concocted.

Theoretically, this deadlock often stems from the legacy of orthodox legal positivism, as once echoed by John Austin through the command theory (command theory) or Hans Kelsen with the Pure Theory of Law (Pure Theory of Law). From a narrow positivist perspective, a law is considered legitimate, valid, and possesses "truth" solely because it is formed by state institutions with the procedural authority to do so, regardless of whether its content or process injures public morality. This paradigm assumes that as long as the plenary session's gavel has been struck and the state gazette has been printed, all people are obliged to submit to the legal fiction that justice has been upheld.

However, the history of human civilization has repeatedly proven how destructive blind adherence to such formal legality can be. Gustav Radbruch, a prominent German legal philosopher, personally experienced how the fascist regime used formally legitimate legal instruments to legitimize crimes against humanity. From this historical experience, the "Radbruch Formula" was born, providing a very sharp antithesis: when a positive law at the most extreme level contradicts justice, then that law is not only flawed, but it loses its essence and is null and void (lex iniusta non est lex). A law born from the womb of lies and cunning intentions to accumulate the power of a particular group, in essence, has lost its spirit from the beginning. It turns into a mere tool of violence hiding behind the cloak of legality.

Furthermore, Lon L. Fuller in his work The Morality of Law reminds us that law has an internal morality (inner morality of law). One of its main principles is that the law must not contain contradictions, must not demand the impossible, and there must be a correspondence between the rules announced and the actual actions of state officials. When lawmakers compile manipulative academic texts—falsifying data, ignoring empirical studies, or inserting smuggled articles that have never been discussed transparently—then the internal morality of the law collapses. The truth claimed by the forming regime is merely an illusion imposed on the public through instruments of state coercion.

The Death of Public Reason in the Legislative Machine

The pathology of law-making that is full of intrigue and manipulation is usually marked by the phenomenon of fast-track legislation (fast-track legislation) or what in the legal political literature is often criticized as stealth legislation. This practice reflects a heartbreaking irony: on the one hand, the state claims to be an adherent of popular sovereignty, but on the other hand, the people are systematically excluded from the policy formulation process that will govern their lives and deaths. When bills are discussed late at night, in luxury hotels far from the reach of public cameras, or passed in a matter of days without drafts accessible to the public, then parliament is essentially practicing a betrayal of the constitution itself.

In conditions like this, the legislative process is reduced to merely a rubber-stamping machine (rubber stamp) for the will of capital holders and political elites. The courtroom, which should be an arena for intellectual debate and academic argument, turns into a transactional market where truth is exchanged for political concessions. Academic texts, which ideally should be a solid scientific foundation based on primary and secondary literature references, often become mere formality documents that are carelessly made only to fulfill administrative obligations. This manipulation of academic texts is a high-level intellectual lie, because it distorts social and scientific facts to justify a policy that actually only benefits a few.

If we borrow the lens of responsive sociology of law from Philippe Nonet and Philip Selznick, the law produced through the tyranny of the majority in parliament by ignoring substantive public participation tends to mutate into repressive law. The main characteristic of repressive law is the subordination of law to the politics of power. Law is no longer functioned as a means of social engineering (law as a tool of social engineering) as aspired to by Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, but is hijacked into a means of social manipulation. The resulting rules will never be able to create just order, but only produce a pseudo-order, where citizens' compliance does not arise from legal awareness, but from fear of criminal sanctions and repression by law enforcement officials.

This intellectually corrupt law-making process produces legislation that suffers from a legitimacy deficit. Truth in the context of constitutional law cannot only be measured from the aspect of rechtmatigheid (formal validity), but must be based on doelmatigheid (usefulness) and gerechtigheid (substantive justice). When the ethical foundation of law-making has eroded due to public lies—such as concealing the original draft from the general public until the final moments of ratification—then every article it produces inherently carries a congenital defect. Such a law may be de facto valid, supported by armed forces and correctional institutions, but de jure and philosophically, it fails to be a civilized law.

judicial review of a law and the Examination of Formal Truth

Faced with the brutality of a legislative machine that is often controlled by a political oligarchy, the architecture of our constitution has indeed provided a fundamental safety valve mechanism (safeguard mechanism) through the Constitutional Court (MK). This is where the battle to prove the true "legal truth" lies. For many years, the tradition of judicial review of a law in Indonesia has relied too heavily on material review (material judicial review), which focuses on whether the substance of an article is contrary to the 1945 Constitution. However, along with the increasing sophistication of manipulation in the legislative process, the paradigm of constitutional review must, and has, undergone a very progressive shift towards formal review (formal judicial review).

A very crucial jurisprudential milestone in this context is Constitutional Court Decision Number 91/PUU-XVIII/2020. This decision is not merely an ordinary legal document, but an intellectual monument that dismantles the illusion of truth from manipulative legislative procedures. Through this decision, the Constitutional Court established the doctrine of meaningful participation (meaningful participation) as an absolute prerequisite that determines the life and death of a law. The Constitutional Court explicitly emphasized that public participation should not only be ritualistic—such as merely inviting academics or civil society groups to the council building just to be photographed and recorded in the attendance list, while their input is completely ignored.

Meaningful participation, according to the Constitutional Court's jurisprudence, demands the fulfillment of three fundamental rights of the public: the right to have their opinions heard (right to be heard), the right for their opinions to be seriously considered (right to be considered), and the right to obtain explanations or answers to the opinions given (right to be explained). If a law is passed without fulfilling these three cumulative prerequisites, then the Constitutional Court has a solid constitutional basis to declare that the law is formally flawed. In other words, the Constitutional Court conveys the message that the "truth" of a law cannot be separated from the honesty and transparency of its formation process. Lies in covering up drafts, or manipulation in suppressing critical voices of the public, are a direct violation of the people's sovereignty mandated by Article 1 paragraph (2) of the 1945 Constitution.

A formal review by the Constitutional Court is essentially a constitutional audit process of the truth of the lawmakers' claims. The Court is tasked with tracing the legislative trail, examining the minutes of the proceedings, and carefully examining whether the academic paper prepared truly reflects the objective conditions of society or is merely an order from a political sponsor. When the Court finds that the process of forming a law is filled with legal smuggling and disregards democratic procedures, then annulling the law in its entirety is not a form of judicial activism which is not excessive, but rather a moral and constitutional obligation to uphold the rule of law. The Court is the last bastion that ensures rationality and common sense do not die at the hands of the tyranny of the majority in parliament.

Reclaiming Hijacked Constitutionalism

Realizing that law can be engineered in such a way as to perpetuate power, the public sphere must not remain silent. True legal truth will never fall from the sky, and is rarely given voluntarily by rulers who are satiated with privileges. That truth must be seized and defended. This is where the relevance of Progressive Law thinking inherited from Prof. Satjipto Rahardjo lies. Progressive law refuses to submit to corrupt legislative texts. It invites jurists, academics, and the wider community to have the moral courage to dismantle structural crimes that hide behind legal formal phrases. Law is for humans, not humans for law; therefore, if the law injures humans due to its manipulative formation process, it is the law that must be destroyed and rebuilt.

The effort to reclaim this hijacked constitutionalism requires strong legal literacy in society. The public should no longer only be invited to memorize articles, but must be educated to be able to dissect the political anatomy behind the birth of an article. Opinion pieces, scientific journals, progressive court decisions, and academic discussions in digital literacy spaces play a very essential role as instruments of national enlightenment. When a law is packaged with sweet promises of prosperity but the draft is kept tightly hidden, it is the critical reasoning of the community that must first shout that a lie is being smuggled.

In the end, the location of the truth of a law that since its creation has been filled with lies and elitist interests is nil. It has no substantive truth, but only a fictional truth that is imposed. However, the absence of truth in this flawed legislative product should be a catalyst for the awakening of public legal awareness. That the struggle to uphold justice does not stop when the law is passed, but has only just begun. Through relentless public oversight, through free academic forums, and through the gavel of an integrity-driven constitutional judge, the lies of a legal product will ultimately always find a way to be exposed.