Focus and Scope
True to its name, Lex Renaissance positions law not as a static inheritance but as a living tradition subject to perpetual renewal. The journal serves as an international forum for rigorous scholarship on how legal systems are reimagined, reformed, and reborn in response to constitutional change, social transformation, technological advancement, economic development, and emerging governance challenges. It privileges research that generates original theoretical, doctrinal, or comparative insight of relevance to a global scholarly readership, rather than descriptive or purely local commentary.
The journal invites doctrinal, normative, comparative, socio-legal, and jurisprudential research that critically evaluates existing legal frameworks, develops innovative legal concepts and doctrines, interrogates judicial and legislative developments, and proposes reasoned solutions to contemporary legal problems. Every manuscript is expected to demonstrate a clear and original contribution to legal knowledge, situated within current international scholarly debates and supported by robust legal analysis.
Theoretical Foundation: The Politics of Law and Responsive Legal Renewal
Lex Renaissance is not merely a name but an analytical commitment. It advances legal renaissance as an interpretive lens (the conviction that legal orders are perpetually reborn rather than fixed), and that their renewal cannot be understood apart from the political configurations that produce them. Against legalistic and positivistic conceptions that treat law as a closed and self-sufficient text, the journal frames law as a living institution shaped by, and responsive to, the social and political forces of its time.
Central to this orientation is Moh. Mahfud MD's theory of the politics of law (politik hukum), which holds that the character of a legal product is determined by the political configuration that produces it: a democratic configuration tends to generate responsive and populist law, while an authoritarian configuration tends to produce conservative, orthodox, and elitist law. This thesis reframes legal reform as inseparable from the quality of democracy, participation, and the balance of institutional power (making the political renewal of law a proper object of rigorous legal scholarship rather than a mere backdrop to it).
Mahfud's framework converses directly with Philippe Nonet and Philip Selznick's typology of repressive, autonomous, and responsive law, which charts law's evolution from an instrument of power toward an open, purposive order that adapts to social needs and integrates competence with participation. The journal takes responsive law as a normative horizon of legal renewal: the movement by which a legal system sheds rigidity and is reborn as an institution attentive to justice and social reality. This dialogue is enriched by a further synthesis of intellectual currents (Satjipto Rahardjo's progressive law (hukum progresif), which insists that law exists for human beings rather than the reverse; Mochtar Kusumaatmadja's conception of law as an instrument for the renewal of society; Roscoe Pound's account of law as responsive social ordering; and contemporary theories of reflexive and transformative law and transformative constitutionalism, which explain how legal systems renew themselves in response to social, technological, and constitutional change.
The distinctiveness of Lex Renaissance lies in this bridging of Indonesian legal-political thought with global reform theory. By reading the politics of law alongside responsive and progressive jurisprudence, the journal treats legal renewal not as incremental amendment but as a theoretically grounded, comparative, and political phenomenon. This is the contribution it asks of every manuscript: not a description of what the law is, but rigorous inquiry into how, why, and under what political conditions the law is reborn.
Scope of the Journal
1. Legal Reform and the Renewal of Legal Institutions
Constitutional reform and constitutional development; legislative and regulatory reform; judicial and institutional reform; reform of governance, democracy, and the rule of law; criminal law and criminal justice reform; civil, commercial, and administrative law reform; public policy and legal development; decentralization and local governance reform.
2. Legal Innovation and Jurisprudential Renewal
Development of legal doctrines and principles; innovative legal concepts and reasoning; judicial interpretation and constitutional adjudication; progressive and transformative jurisprudence; legal theory, legal philosophy, and constitutional theory; Islamic legal thought and contemporary jurisprudence; law and technological transformation, including digitalization and artificial intelligence; legal responses to societal change and emerging challenges.
3. Comparative and Global Perspectives on Legal Reform
Comparative constitutional law; comparative governance and regulatory frameworks; comparative judicial institutions and systems; comparative approaches to legal modernization; legal transplantation and adaptation; human rights, constitutionalism, and democratic governance in comparative perspective; transnational legal developments and global legal challenges.
Editorial Priority
Lex Renaissance prioritizes manuscripts that renew legal understanding (those that critically reassess prevailing frameworks, advance novel doctrines, evaluate judicial and legislative responses, or offer comparative insight for the improvement of legal systems, institutions, and governance). Consistent with its international orientation, the journal favours work engaging current global scholarly conversations and demonstrating originality, methodological rigour, and transferable significance beyond a single jurisdiction. Although Indonesia remains an important point of reference, submissions are not confined to Indonesian legal issues; contributions from all jurisdictions are welcome where they offer significant theoretical, doctrinal, jurisprudential, or comparative insight into the reform and renewal of law.