"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.