Constitutional Boundaries of Judicial Deliberation: Reconstructing a Deliberative Boundary Framework in Constitutional Adjudication

Abstract

This article examines the constitutional boundaries of judicial deliberation in the practice of the Indonesian Constitutional Court by positioning the Judges’ Consultative Meeting (Rapat Permusyawaratan Hakim/RPH) as the primary deliberative space in constitutional adjudication. Existing studies on constitutional justice have largely focused on constitutional court decisions as final outputs, while the deliberative process through which judicial reasoning and constitutional meaning are constructed has received limited scholarly attention. This article contributes to constitutional adjudication scholarship by shifting the analysis from constitutional court decisions as final products to judicial deliberation as the formative process through which constitutional meaning is constructed. Using normative legal research with statutory, case, conceptual, and comparative approaches, this article analyzes Constitutional Court Decisions Number 46/PUU-XIV/2016, Number 005/PUU-IV/2006, and Number 90/PUU-XXI/2023 to examine deliberative configurations, patterns of judicial reasoning, and the role of dissenting opinions in constitutional review. The findings show that judicial deliberation functions not only as an internal decision-making mechanism, but also as a space for developing constitutional interpretation, which under certain conditions may lead to the implicit expansion of judicial authority. In response, this article proposes the Deliberative Boundary Framework as a normative-analytical framework for maintaining the balance between judicial independence and constitutional accountability through jurisdictional, procedural, reasoning, and substantive boundaries. The article argues that deliberative integrity is essential to sustaining the legitimacy of constitutional adjudication in a democratic constitutional state.