My Law and Language Experience of the U.S. and Indonesia

Abstract

I grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, multilingual. My primary languages, however, are English and
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), which I learned at home and school. This includes my legal
education, where I was trained in the American and Indonesian legal systems, in English and
Indonesian. I pursued my legal studies at Harvard Law School and University of Indonesia Faculty
of Law (FHUI). My first encounter with non-Indonesian legal systems including the American law
was not at Harvard. At FHUI, I studied the influence of Dutch and American legal systems on the
Indonesian law. While the trace of Dutch law in Indonesia is widely renowned, the American
influence on the Indonesian law was not explicit. It was, however, at Harvard through active
reading and research that I uncovered this missing but critical piece of the puzzle of the
Indonesian legal system—a piece that was barely discussed in academia or practice.