Beyond Legal Formalism: an Integrative Paradigm of Legal Decision-Making for Substantive Justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38035/jlph.v6i6.3954Keywords:
Legal Formalism, Legal Decision-Making, Substantive Justice, Judicial Reasoning, Legal CertaintyAbstract
Legal decision-making has traditionally rested on legal formalism, which secures legal certainty, consistency, and procedural correctness. However, decisions that are formally valid may still fail to respond to the substantive dimensions of justice, particularly in disputes involving complex social realities, competing rights, and ambiguous or incomplete legislation. Existing scholarship tends to frame formalism and substantive justice as opposing alternatives. This article therefore asks how legal decision-making can reconcile legal certainty with substantive justice without undermining the authority of law. It applies a doctrinal and conceptual legal research method, combined with comparative and normative approaches, and draws on recent peer-reviewed scholarship on judicial reasoning, discretion, and proportionality. The analysis shows that adjudication is not the mechanical application of predetermined rules but an integrative process in which legal norms, factual context, constitutional principles, anticipated consequences, and reasoned justification interact. The article proposes an Integrative Paradigm of Legal Decision-Making with five dimensions, in which legal certainty remains the foundational requirement and substantive justice serves as the normative orientation of interpretation. The novelty lies in replacing the dichotomy between formalism and judicial subjectivity with a structured relationship between rules, reasoning, and justice, offering a conceptual model for courts facing complex disputes.
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