Employment Law Reform: A Responsive and Participatory Approach to Create Laws that Achieve Social Justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46799/ijssr.v6i6.1409Keywords:
Social Justice, Responsive Law, Judicial Review of The Job Creation Law, Employment LawAbstract
Social justice is a key measure of whether Indonesia, as a welfare state, is capable of realizing true prosperity. The numerous judicial reviews of the Employment Cluster of the Job Creation Law, both the 2020 Job Creation Law and the 2023 Job Creation Law, reflect public doubts about the country's ability to achieve social justice. This paper reviews the Job Creation Law from a social justice perspective and then explains how responsive law achieves social justice. The research method is normative juridical, using both a statutory and conceptual approach. The secondary data sources consist of primary legal materials, various legal regulations and court decisions, and secondary legal materials, namely books and articles related to the research. The results of the study indicate that the Job Creation Law, specifically the Employment Cluster, has shortcomings in terms of social justice. The numerous judicial reviews from the public are due to the lack of public participation and transparency in the law-making process, and are considered to not provide social justice for applicants, most of whom are workers. Responsive law offers advantages that can address the shortcomings of the Job Creation Law, as it better accommodates the needs and aspirations of the community and brings the desired benefits to realize social justice by prioritizing the principles of openness, efficiency and effectiveness, clarity of objectives, and meaningful community participation.
References
Atmadja, I. D. G., & Budiartha, I. N. P. (2018). Teori-teori hukum. Setara Press.
Barroso, L. R. (2019). Countermajoritarian, representative, and enlightened: The roles of constitutional courts in democracies. The American Journal of Comparative Law, 67(1), 109–143.
Florczak- Wator, M. (2020). Judicial law-making in European constitutional courts. Taylor & Francis.
Hadiyati, N. (2022). Legal implications of MSME regulation on the conditionally unconstitutional Job Creation Law. Jurnal Komunikasi Hukum (JKH), 8(1), 291–306.
Hajiji, M., & Wahjudin, L. (2024). Implementation of community participation in the process for forming responsive regional regulations in Bandung City.
Hamalainen, H., & Salminen, J. (2025). Inclusive participation in law-making: Good governance or a constitutional obligation? The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 13(2), 213–235.
Hariram, N. P., Mekha, K. B., Suganthan, V., & Sudhakar, K. (2023). Sustainalism: An integrated socio-economic-environmental model to address sustainable development and sustainability. Sustainability, 15(13), 10682.
Huda, N. (2023). Politik hukum dan pembangunan sistem hukum nasional. Sinar Grafika.
Izah, S. C., Ogwu, M. C., & Salimon, S. S. (2025). Principles of sustainable development and environmental management. In Evaluating environmental processes and technologies (pp. 29–63). Springer.
Juanda, & Juanda, O. (2022). Filsafat hukum Indonesia: Konsep pembangunan sistem hukum nasional. PT RajaGrafindo Persada.
Junaidi, A., & Aziz Zaelani, M. (2021). Embodying the meaning of the guardian of the constitution in the role of the Constitutional Court of reducing constitutions indicated by policy corruption. International Journal of Educational Research & Social Sciences, 2(3), 592–599.
Marshall, S., & Moolchand, E. (2024). Participatory action research methods for labour law research and reform. In Research methods in labour law (pp. 331–348). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Novak, T. (2024). Balancing state authority and autonomy in public sector employment relations: The role of legal and social dialogue frameworks. Future: Public Administration and Policy Innovations, 1(2).
Renn, O., Webler, T., & Schweizer, P.-J. (2026). Fairness and competence in citizen participation: A critical review of formats for deliberative policymaking.
Setiyono, B. (2018). Model & desain negara kesejahteraan. Penerbit Nuansa Cendekia.
Vosko, L. F., Grundy, J., & Thomas, M. P. (2016). Challenging new governance: Evaluating new approaches to employment standards enforcement in common law jurisdictions. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 37(2), 373–398.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Mardonius Irawan Profianto, Faisal Santiago
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
