The one roof system, a judicial governance model in Indonesia, where the Supreme Court holds the technical judicial authority and court administration authority, is considered rare among prevailing systems around the world. The idea of distancing courts from managerial issues by establishing a judicial council has been accepted as the solution in many countries around the world. However, it is clearly just the opposite in the Indonesian system, which has chosen to give the managerial function to the Supreme Court. Progress has been made since its implementation, but significant problems remain. This research aims to understand whether the one roof system has achieved its goal and what are the effects to the judiciary. It also presents the dilemmas around judicial governance to balance the principle of management and judicial independence.
Historical overview to trace back the idea of the one roof system since 1958, and interviews have been conducted to justices, judges, and high-ranking managers in Indonesia. The findings suggest that threats to the institutional independence of the judiciary by the government have been significantly reduced. However the centralization of power may eventually lead to possible infringements of the internal and core independence of judges from within the judiciary itself. Further, this system changes the landscape of the relationships between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. The institutional alienation as a result of greater autonomy of the judiciary from the government and parliament has resulted in a disconnect in the legislative and policymaking process concerning judicial organization.
The evaluation also reveals that the quality management approach can be used to solve the problems of internal accountability of the one roof system, however, the application of quality management is limited by the quality of the legal framework in the arrangements for the fundamentals of the organization. In a large organization like the Indonesian judiciary, with its diverse geographical, unstable political condition and contextual challenges, the application of quality management to promote change can be difficult to control.
