Judicial Reasoning on Climate Justice in Indonesian Citizen Lawsuits: A Constitutional Environmental Perspective

Authors

  • I Gusti Bagus Suryawan Universitas Warmadewa
  • Ketut Ngastawa Universitas Warmadewa
  • Agus Apriawan Universitas Warmadewa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26532/jh.v42i4.55799

Keywords:

Climate Justice, Citizen Lawsuit, Constitutional Environmental Rights, Environmental Constitutionalism, Judicial Reasoning.

Abstract

Climate change and environmental degradation have driven new developments in environmental law, particularly regarding the role of courts in ensuring state responsibility for ecological protection. This study aims to analyze how Indonesian courts’ judicial reasoning is constructed in environmental citizen lawsuit cases and to formulate a model for strengthening legal reasoning to institutionalize constitutional climate justice in the Indonesian legal system. This study uses normative legal research methods with statutory, conceptual, case-based, and comparative approaches. The analysis is conducted on several strategic environmental cases, including the Samarinda mining lawsuit, Jakarta air pollution, the Kendeng dispute, and forest fires, and is compared with developments in international climate litigation such as Urgenda v. State of the Netherlands, Neubauer v. Germany, and Milieudefensie v. Shell. The results show that Indonesian judicial reasoning has evolved from an administrative legality approach to a constitutional approach that recognizes the right to the environment, active state obligations, public participation, the precautionary principle, and ecological restoration. However, these principles are still partially implemented. This research proposes a Constitutional Climate Justice Framework that integrates constitutional environmental rights, state climate obligations, science-based governance, environmental democracy, intergenerational justice, and restorative obligations as a model for strengthening the role of courts in addressing the challenges of climate change.

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Published

2026-10-13

Issue

Vol. 42 No. 4 (2026): Jurnal Hukum

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