Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-15T06:15:41.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Civil Courts and the Development of Commercial Relations: The Case of North Sumatra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

J. Joseph Burns
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This study of the relationship between businessmen and the civil courts in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra finds that Sumatran businessmen seldom use the courts either to collect retail debts or to settle commercial disputes among themselves. In fact, they were found to litigate disputes only when they hoped to salvage something from a failing business relationship, or when simply opening litigation could by itself help discharge a bureaucratic responsibility, satisfy a personal grudge, or harass a defendant into making an out-of-court settlement. The unusual cost structure of the civil courts, relatively low formal costs and relatively high informal costs, contributed to an unfavorable image of the courts as expensive, arbitrary, and inefficient dispute settlement mechanisms in the eyes of one important group of businessmen, the rubber exporters. Other characteristics of the exporters, their trading partners, and the social and economic relationships among them were found, however, to present more basic obstacles to the use of the courts in settling commercial disputes. These results then suggest some general conditions under which the capacity of a legal system to influence the development of commercial relations is severely limited.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , 1981 , pp. 347 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association

References

ABEL, Richard L. (1979) “Western Courts in Non-Western Settings: Patterns of Court Use in Colonial and Neo-Colonial Africa,” in Burman, Sandra B. and Harrell-Bond, Barbara E. (eds.), The Imposition of Law. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
BLANKENBURG, Erhard (1975) “Studying the Frequency of Civil Litigation in Germany,” 9 Law & Society Review 307.Google Scholar
BONN, Robert L. (1972) “The Predictability of Nonlegalistic Adjudication,” 6 Law & Society Review 563.Google Scholar
BLACK, Donald J. (1973) “Mobilization of Law,” 2 Journal of Legal Studies 125.Google Scholar
BURNS, J. Joseph (1978) “The Management of Risk: Social Factors in the Development of Exchange Relations Among the Rubber Traders of North Sumatra,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Yale University.Google Scholar
BURNS, J. Joseph (1979) “Litigation and Compromise: A Comparison of Litigation Patterns in the United States and Indonesia,” Paper presented at the 1979 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association.Google Scholar
COHN, Bernard S. (1967) “Some Notes on Law and Change in North India,” in Bohannan, Paul (ed.), Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict. New York: Natural History Press.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence and Robert V., PERCIVAL (1976) “A Tale of Two Courts: Litigation in Alameda and San Benito Counties,” 10 Law & Society Review 267.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1975) “Afterword: Explaining Litigation,” 9 Law & Society Review 347.Google Scholar
GAUTAMA, Sudargo (1979) Arbitrase Dagang Internasional. Bandung, Indonesia: Penerbit Alumni.Google Scholar
GAUTAMA, Sudargo (1972) An Introduction to Indonesian Law: Unity in Diversity. Bandung, Indonesia: Alumni Print.Google Scholar
GROSSMAN, Joel B. and Austin, SARAT (1975) “Litigation in the Federal Courts: A Comparative Perspective,” 9 Law & Society Review 321.Google Scholar
HAGAN, John, HEWITT, John D., and Duane F., ALWIN (1979) “Ceremonial Justice: Crime and Punishment in a Loosely Coupled System,” 58 Social Forces 506.Google Scholar
KIDDER, Robert (1973) “Courts and Conflict in an Indian City: A Study in Legal Impact,” 11 Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 121.Google Scholar
KURCZEWSKI, Jacek and Kazimierz, FRIESKE (1977) “Some Problems in the Legal Regulation of the Activities of Economic Institutions,” 11 Law & Society Review 489.Google Scholar
LEMPERT, Richard (1978) “More Tales of Two Courts: Exploring Changes in the ‘Dispute Settlement Function’ of Trial Courts,” 13 Law & Society Review 91.Google Scholar
LEV, Daniel S. (1962) “The Supreme Court and Adat Inheritance Law in Indonesia,” 11 American Journal of Comparative Law 205.Google Scholar
LEV, Daniel S. (1965a) “The Lady and the Banyon Tree: Civil-Law Change in Indonesia,” 14 American Journal of Comparative Law 282.Google Scholar
LEV, Daniel S. (1965b) “The Politics of Judicial Development in Indonesia,” 7 Comparative Studies in Society and History 173.Google Scholar
LEV, Daniel S. (1972) Islamic Courts in Indonesia: A Study in the Political Bases of Legal Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
LOWY, Michael J. (1978) “A Good Name is Worth More Than Money: Strategies of Court Use in Urban Ghana,” in Nader, Laura and Todd, Harry F. Jr. (eds.), The Disputing Process—Law in Ten Societies. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
MACAULAY, Stewart (1963) “Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” 28 American Sociological Review 55.Google Scholar
MACAULAY, Stewart (1977) “Elegant Models, Empirical Pictures, and the Complexities of Contract,” 11 Law & Society Review 507.Google Scholar
MERRY, Sally Engle (1979) “Going to Court: Strategies of Dispute Management in an American Urban Neighborhood,” 13 Law & Society Review 891.Google Scholar
MOORE, Sally Falk (1973) “Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study,” 7 Law & Society Review 719.Google Scholar
New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts (1980) Annual Report of the Administrative Director of the Courts of New Jersey. Trenton.Google Scholar
RHEINSTEIN, Max (1967) Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
SARAT, Austin (1976) “Alternatives in Dispute Processing: Litigation in a Small Claims Court,” 10 Law & Society Review 339.Google Scholar
TODD, Harry F. Jr. (1978) “Litigious Marginals: Character and Disputing in a Bavarian Village,” in Nader, Laura and Todd, Harry F. Jr. (eds.), The Disputing Process—Law in Ten Societies. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
TRUBEK, David M. (1972) “Max Weber on Law and the Rise of Capitalism,” 1972 Wisconsin Law Review 720.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of the Census (1979) Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1979. Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
WANNER, Craig (1974) “The Public Ordering of Private Relations: Part I: Initiating Civil Cases in Urban Trial Courts,” 8 Law & Society Review 421.Google Scholar
WEBER, Max (1967) Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
YNGVESSON, Barbara and Patricia, HENNESSEY (1975) “Small Claims, Complex Disputes: A Review of the Small Claims Literature,” 9 Law & Society Review 219.Google Scholar