Legal Literacy - The Constitutional Court (MK) has an important role in maintaining the supremacy of the constitution and realizing substantive justice in Indonesia. Through its authority in reviewing laws and landmark decisions, the MK has changed the way of law and strengthened democracy in Indonesia.

The Role of the Constitutional Court in Maintaining Constitutional Supremacy and Realizing Substantive Justice

As a judicial institution, the character of the Constitutional Court (MK) as a constitutional court is different from other courts. The MK is a court of norms that has the authority to examine the constitutionality of a norm with the constitution. When the norm actually causes constitutional harm and is contrary to the constitution as the highest law (the supreme law of the land), then the validity of the norm can be annulled. This is the background for the birth of the MK and the doctrine constitutional review. According to Hans Kelsen, in order to ensure the implementation of the constitution as the highest law, an organ is needed to examine whether a legal product is contrary to the constitution or not. This constitutional review authority is ultimately the authority of the MK throughout the world. Meanwhile, other authorities are additional and based on state practice in each country.

In that case, constitutional supremacy is not only interpreted as the supremacy of the articles of the 1945 Constitution, because the 1945 Constitution is a manifestation of the joint agreement of all people which contains ideology and moral values ​​as guidelines for the substance of law formed through mechanisms regulated in the 1945 Constitution.

In this conception, the interpretation of the text of the 1945 Constitution will certainly always change in accordance with the achievement of ideals, contextualization of the basis of the state, and the occurrence of changes in society itself. Although a joint agreement has been formulated in the constitution, it does not mean that the process stops. The social process that forms a joint agreement always occurs and must be taken into consideration in interpreting the text of the constitution. In this context, it is said that the constitution is not a dead object but a living object in the sense that the values ​​contained in the constitution need to be adapted to the times, the dynamics of community life and experience in state practice and national and state life (living constitution), so reading the constitution needs to be done on the deepest meaning (the moral reading).