Although we often think of law and the legal system as abstract things, they are not: law is people’s work, made concrete and filled with life by those who draft, interpret, apply, and enforce it, and also by those who reflect on it and teach it. Therefore, how well Indonesia’s legal system works, whether it succeeds in fully implementing the rule of law, and whether it brings justice to Indonesia’s diverse people depends on its jurists, and thereby ultimately on the quality of its lega...

In this farewell speech on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at Maastricht University, given in March 2022, Aalt Willem Heringa discusses the too often ignored role of courts as interpreters of statutes. The courts, by checking the (constitutional) quality of statutes, contribute to the rule of law and parliamentary democracy.

Independent courts may add to the confidence in a constitutional and parliamentary system as a whole, by being in a position...