Soepomo — Mr. Soepomo — was the Indonesian jurist who wrote the Voorbericht bij de vierde druk (foreword to the fourth edition) of B. ter Haar BzN’s Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht (4th ed., 1950), and who would become one of the principal architects of the independent Indonesian legal system. His foreword to the fourth edition of Ter Haar’s standard work — written in January 1950, in the middle of the Indonesian revolution and the political and social unrest that followed the Japanese surrender of August 1945 — is a document of the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial legal science, and it records the Indonesian jurist’s judgment that Ter Haar’s “magistraal inzicht in beginselen en stelsel voorshands maatgevend blijft” (magisterial insight into principles and system remains for the time being authoritative).
The Voorbericht bij de vierde druk
Soepomo’s Voorbericht bij de vierde druk (foreword to the fourth edition) of the Beginselen en Stelsel was written in January 1950 and published in the fourth edition of the work, issued by J. B. Wolters of Groningen and Djakarta in 1950. In it, Soepomo records that, after the appearance of an unchanged second edition in 1941, a third edition was issued in 1946 — “ten onrechte ‘tweede ongewijzigde druk’ genoemd” (erroneously called the ‘second unchanged edition’) — and that the fourth edition is again issued with the text unchanged, save for a supplementary literature list prepared by Mr. H. Th. Chabot. The supplementary literature list records the works published after the appearance of Ter Haar’s book in 1939, and it shows that “de studie van het Adatrecht sindsdien niet heeft stilgestaan” (the study of Adatrecht has not stood still since then).
The English translation
Soepomo records in his Voorbericht that the Beginselen en Stelsel was translated into English and published in New York in 1948, with an introductory chapter on the ethnological background of adatrecht and on the place of adatrecht in the organisation of the legal system of the former Netherlands Indies, written by Professors E. Adamson Hoebel and A. Arthur Schiller. “Zo is Ter Haar’s monumentaal werk thans eveneens toegankelijk voor het Engels lezende publiek,” Soepomo writes, “hetgeen ongetwijfeld zal bijdragen tot een ruimere verbreiding van het inzicht in het systeem van het Adatrecht dan tot dusverre mogelijk was” — thus Ter Haar’s monumental work is now equally accessible to the English-reading public, which will undoubtedly contribute to a wider dissemination of the insight into the system of Adatrecht than has hitherto been possible.
The judgment on the time for revision
Soepomo’s key judgment in the Voorbericht is that the time for a revision of Ter Haar’s book has not yet come. “De tijd om tot herziening van het boek over te gaan, lijkt mij voorshands nog niet aangebroken,” he writes. “Het is waar, dat de Japanse bezetting gedurende de jaren 1942–1945 en de daarop gevolgde nationale revolutie het Indonesische rechtsleven niet onberoerd hebben gelaten; integendeel, het proces van individualisering, differentiatie en nivellering en het proces van desintegratie hier en daar in de Indonesische maatschappij zijn door al die gebeurtenissen ongetwijfeld versneld, doch de politieke en sociale onrust, waarin Indonesië momenteel nog verkeert, laat een wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de gelding van nieuwe adatrechtsnormen nog niet toe” — it is true that the Japanese occupation during the years 1942–1945 and the national revolution that followed have not left Indonesian legal life untouched; on the contrary, the process of individualisation, differentiation, and levelling, and the process of disintegration here and there in Indonesian society, have undoubtedly been accelerated by all those events, but the political and social unrest in which Indonesia currently still finds itself does not yet permit a scientific investigation into the validity of new adatrecht norms.
The judgment is, in its way, a continuation of the position taken by Logemann in the foreword to the third edition (1946): Ter Haar’s “magistraal inzicht in beginselen en stelsel blijft voorshands maatgevend, zoodat een ongewijzigde herdruk volkomen gewettigd is” (magisterial insight into principles and system remains for the time being authoritative, so that an unchanged reprint is fully warranted). The post-colonial Indonesian jurist thus concurs with the colonial Dutch jurist in the judgment that Ter Haar’s account of Indonesian adatrecht remains, in 1950, the authoritative statement — a concurrence that marks the continuity of the legal science across the colonial-to-post-colonial transition.
The clementie and the terminology
Soepomo closes his Voorbericht with a request for clemency: “Bij de verschijning van de 4e druk willen wij gaarne de clementie inroepen van de gebruikers, dat in deze herdruk nog niet die wijzigingen in de terminologie werden aangebracht, die de veranderde tijdsomstandigheden zouden hebben geëist” — at the appearance of the 4th edition we gladly invoke the clemency of the users, that in this reprint not those changes in terminology have been made that the changed circumstances of the time would have required. The request acknowledges that the colonial terminology of the work — the terms inlandsch (native) and inheemsch (indigenous), which Soepomo, in his Voorbericht bij de vierde druk, notes are “thans uit de tijd, ja zelfs aanstoot geven” (now out of date, yes even give offence) — has become unacceptable in the post-colonial era, but that the urgency of reprinting the work, given the existing demand, has not permitted the comprehensive revision of the terminology that the changed circumstances would require.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Soepomo is significant as the Indonesian jurist who, in January 1950, wrote the Voorbericht to the fourth edition of Ter Haar’s Beginselen en Stelsel — the standard work on Indonesian adatrecht that places the Atjehnese adatrecht within the wider Indonesian legal landscape. His foreword is a document of the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial legal science: it records the Indonesian jurist’s concurrence with the colonial Dutch judgment that Ter Haar’s account remains authoritative, his acknowledgment of the impact of the Japanese occupation and the national revolution on Indonesian legal life, and his request for clemency on the question of the colonial terminology. Soepomo’s figure connects the colonial adatrecht scholarship to the post-colonial Indonesian legal system, and his Voorbericht is the post-colonial stamp on the work that remains, in 1950, the authoritative account of Indonesian adatrecht — including the adatrecht of the rechtskring Atjeh.
See Also
- Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht (Ter Haar, 4th ed. 1950)
- B. ter Haar BzN
- J. B. Wolters
- adat
- Atjeh adatrecht (Ter Haar account)
- Japanese invasion of Atjeh
- Djakarta
- 1945
- 1946
- 1948
- 1950
Source
Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht, door Mr. B. ter Haar Bzn. Vierde ongewijzigde druk. Groningen, Djakarta: J. B. Wolters, 1950. Voorbericht bij de vierde druk by Soepomo (January 1950).