ANALISIS HUKUM PROGRESIF TERHADAP PERLINDUNGAN HAK MASYARAKAT LOKAL DALAM SENGKETA LAHAN PADA PUTUSAN MAHKAMAH AGUNG NOMOR 5673 K/PDT/2025

Abstract

This article examines Supreme Court Decision Number 5673 K/Pdt/2025 concerning a dispute over 27.25 hectares of hereditary land in Kutai Barat through the lens of progressive law. The dispute arose after the claimant relied on Surat Pernyataan Penguasaan Hak Atas Tanah and hereditary control, while the court prioritized the company's forest area borrowing permit and held that the claimant's documents were not recognized under the Basic Agrarian Law. This study uses normative legal research with statutory, conceptual, and case approaches. Legal materials consist of the court decision, agrarian and forestry regulations, constitutional principles on indigenous and local communities, and scholarly works on progressive law and agrarian justice. The study finds that the judgment strongly emphasized formal legality and chronology of administrative documents, yet gave limited attention to the social history of land control, the evidentiary value of long standing possession, and the asymmetrical power relation between local communities and corporations. The reasoning also contains an inconsistency in the year of issuance of the claimant's SPPHAT, which weakens the chronological comparison used by the court. From a progressive law perspective, the decision reflects a preference for legal certainty in a narrow sense rather than substantive justice. The article argues that judges in agrarian disputes should interpret evidence more contextually, assess the social origin of land control more carefully, and use legal discovery to prevent formal law from erasing vulnerable community interests.