The Institutional Turn in Islamic Legal Studies: Evidence from Indonesian Religious Courts

Abstract

Islamic legal scholarship has traditionally centred on doctrinal interpretation, juristic reasoning, and socio-legal inquiry, while comparatively less attention has been given to the institutional structures through which Islamic legal authority is organised and exercised within contemporary states. This article examines the institutional transformation of the Indonesian Religious Courts to develop an institutional perspective that treats institutions not merely as settings for applying Islamic law, but as constitutive sites through which Islamic legal authority is formed, mediated, and exercised. Employing institutional legal analysis and documentary research, the study examines legislation, Supreme Court regulations, judicial reform documents, institutional reports, and official judicial statistics to trace changes in the jurisdiction, governance, organisational capacity, and digital administration of the Religious Courts. The findings demonstrate that their transformation extends beyond legislative reform to encompass jurisdictional expansion, integration within the national judicial system, organisational standardisation, and digital judicial governance. These developments indicate that the practical authority of Islamic law depends not only on doctrinal validity but also on the institutional conditions through which legal norms are governed, implemented, and recognised as authoritative in public legal practice. Building on these findings, the article develops an Institutional Framework for Contemporary Islamic Legal Studies comprising five interrelated dimensions: legal doctrine, institutional governance, institutional capacity, institutional legitimacy, and legal authority. The framework advances an institutional turn in Islamic legal studies by conceptualising institutions as constitutive sites of Islamic legal authority, thereby complementing rather than replacing doctrinal, socio-legal, and legal-pluralist approaches.