Assessing Crime Victims’ Legal Standing in Judicial Review of Criminal Norms: A Normative Causality Model in Indonesia

Abstract

This article examines the legal standing of crime victims in the judicial review of criminal norms before the Constitutional Court of Indonesia. Using normative legal research with statutory, case, and conceptual approaches, it analyses constitutional provisions, criminal law and criminal procedure norms, and four selected Constitutional Court decisions concerning direct and indirect victims. The findings show that victim status alone is insufficient. Applicants must demonstrate legally relevant victim status, impairment of constitutional rights, a specific and actual or reasonably foreseeable injury, a normative causal relationship between that injury and the challenged statutory norm, and the possibility of normative remedy through constitutional adjudication. The article contributes by operationalising the established five-part doctrine of constitutional injury through a contextual normative causality framework designed for claims originating in concrete criminal events. This framework explains how factual victimisation may be translated into constitutionally cognizable injury without converting constitutional review into adjudication of individual criminal cases. Although developed from Indonesian jurisprudence, the model has broader relevance for constitutional review theory by clarifying how victim participation and access to constitutional justice may be accommodated within the institutional limits of a constitutional court. It therefore offers an analytical framework for balancing constitutional access and normative jurisdiction.

Keywords

• Crime Victims
• Judicial Review
• Criminal Norms
• Constitutional Injury
• Constitutional Court