Catatan Kuliah-Belajar Mandiri

Pertemuan Kedua (29 September 2020)

Oleh: Tanius Sebastian

Apa itu “Etika Profesi Hukum”?

Poin-poin di bawah ini adalah potongan-potongan teks yang penting untuk dipelajari dari bagian Preface,
buku Ethics and Law. An Introduction (Prof. Bradley Wendell). Saya memberikan penjelasan untuk setiap
(atau beberapa) potongan teks tersebut.
1) … the ethical principles that govern the professional activities of lawyers.
a. Apa yang dipelajari/dibahas di dalam bidang “etika profesi hukum”?
b. Prinsip-prinsip etis yang dimaksud di sini adalah yang telah dipelajari di dalam mata kuliah
Etika Dasar MKU UNPAR, yakni gagasan-gagasan berdasarkan refleksi tentang
moralitas/apa itu hakikat tindakan yang baik/yang buruk;
c. Coba Anda cari dan telusuri apa saja yang termasuk aktivitas profesional para ahli hukum!
Berikan setidaknya dua contoh konkret aktivitas tersebut (boleh dirujuk dari kisah
nyata/pemberitaan media massal).

2) … the relationship of lawyers’ ethics to two important normative domains: first, general moral
considerations that apply to all of us, as moral agents; and second, to the law, with its
characteristic ways of making and justifying demands on citizens of a society.
a. Poin dari potongan teks di atas adalah bahwa kajian legal ethics memiliki sejumlah ruang
lingkup, yakni:
i. Apa saja prinsip-prinsip etis yang menata/menentukan/mengatur pelbagai
aktivitas ahli-ahli hukum?
ii. Bagaimana hubungan antara poin (i) di atas dan dua bidang normatif yang
penting lainnya, yakni (a) bidang moral, yang memuat pertimbangan dan
penalaran moral yang berlaku umum bagi kita semua sebagai pengemban-
pengemban moral; (b) bidang hukum, yang memberikan pendasaran dan
pembenaran atas tuntutan-tuntutan terhadap kehidupan warga negara di dalam
suatu masyarakat?
b. Apa peran dan bagaimana kedudukan dari bidang etika profesi hukum di dalam konsepsi
ilmu hukum yang menitikberatkan “cara berpikir yuridis [thinking like a lawyer]” tapi juga
yang mengacu pada wawasan ilmiah dan kemanusiaan yang lebih luas [law and society,
law and philosophy, law and culture etc. approach]?
c. Untuk dapat menjawab pertanyaan di atas, pelajarilah isi kurikulum FH UNPAR
sebagaimana yang dituliskan di dalam Juklak Akademis FH UNPAR. Lantas, cermatilah
posisi mata kuliah etika profesi hukum di dalam susunan mata kuliah FH UNPAR. Mengapa
mata kuliah ini diletakkan di tingkat atas, bukan tingkat awal? Mengapa mata kuliah ini
mensyaratkan sejumlah SKS lulus untuk menempuhnya?

3) The law is neither inherently good nor inherently bad but is instead a tool that can be used for
good or bad ends.
4) Although one commonly personifies “the law,” the institutions and procedures of the legal
system cannot exist apart from the people who administer them.

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 a. Perhatikan contoh/ilustrasi dari pernyataan-pernyataan yang dilontarkan Mahfud MD.,
Menkopolhukum RI, tentang keadaan praktik hukum di Indonesia!
b. Berdasarkan kutipan nomor 3 dan 4 di atas, apa respon Anda terhadap pernyataan dari
Mahfud MD. tersebut? Berdasarkan poin kedua kutipan itu, apa yang keliru/tepat dari
pernyataan beliau?

5) Whether lawyers are merely hired guns who cannot be blamed for representing nasty clients or
doing nasty things for them or whether instead they should be held personally morally
responsible for their actions is one of the great questions of practical ethics.
a. “Etika praktis” yang sudah dipelajari di dalam mata kuliah Etika Dasar MKU UNPAR,
berfokus pada upaya merefleksikan pertanyaan-pertanyaan kritis tentang peran,
kedudukan, dan keputusan dari tindakan seseorang dalam hubungannya dengan orang
lain atau lingkungan hidupnya (lihat juga penjelasan potongan teks nomor 1);
b. Diterapkan di dalam konteks tanggung jawab profesi hukum, konsep etika praktis
tersebut memunculkan pertanyaan tentang peran ahli hukum ketika melayani
kepentingan-kepentingan klien (ketika ahli hukum mengemban hukum);
c. Menurut Wendell, terdapat dua peran dari sosok lawyers, yakni:
i. Lawyers sebagai senjata api sewaan. Dengan peran seperti ini, mereka tidak
dapat dipersalahkan akibat tembakan yang diletuskannya. Ada dua makna dari
tembakan yang mereka lontarkan tersebut. Pertama, tembakan mereka adalah
dalam kapasitasnya merepresentasikan kemauan klien yang brengsek. Kedua,
tembakan itu adalah hasil tindakan dari mereka melakukan hal-hal brengsek demi
klien;
ii. Lawyers sebagai person yang bertanggung jawab secara moral atas pelbagai
tindakan mereka sendiri.
d. Refleksikanlah perbedaan di antara kedua peran di atas dengan cara memberi contoh
konkret wujud dari masing-masing peran!

6) … to use the tools of moral and political philosophy to analyze the responsibilities of those
professionals who represent clients inside and outside the courtroom.
7) … the ethical problems facing lawyers are a helpful lens through which to view the more general
issue of the nature of the relationships among law, state, and citizens.
a. Apa manfaat/kegunaan mempelajari etika profesi hukum? Bagaimana manfaat itu dapat
diperoleh?
b. Di dalam kerangka konseptual etika profesi hukum, gagasan-gagasan filsafat moral dan
politik akan dipakai untuk menganalisis tanggung jawab professional ahli hukum;
c. Untuk memahami konsep filsafat moral, cermati kutipan dari Prof. Jonathan Wolff berikut
(diambil dari bukunya Introduction to Moral Philosophy, hlm. 2):
“… what, more exactly, is moral philosophy, and why study it? From time to time people
turn to moral philosophy because they face a serious moral difficulty in their own life that
they hope will be resolved, or at least eased, by understanding the works of the great
philosophers. Those with such hopes treat philosophers rather like some people approach
religious leaders: as a source of moral wisdom and comfort. But as things are, it is the rare
moral philosopher who is trained or equipped to help in this very direct fashion.
Nevertheless moral philosophy is a practical subject, albeit with many significant
and important theoretical elements. What moral philosophy can do, at its best, is to help
you develop your moral outlook on life. By this I mean that it can help you come to a keener
sense of what does and does not matter from a moral point of view. It can help you form

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 a view of what considerations do, and do not, need to be taken seriously, and how we
should develop our reasoning, attention, and emotions. Most importantly, it can help you
think through the nature of your relationships with other people, and with other things of
value, such as the animal world and the natural environment. It can help you think about
how best to use your talents and energy, and what your goals in life should be. It can also
have implications for how you should try to inf luence and, where appropriate, educate
those around you. Although, as we will see, many moral philosophers have offered
guidance to help in particular situations, often what the best moral philosophers do is
inspire you to come to a way of seeing the world and the individuals within it.”

d. Sedangkan filsafat politik merupakan suatu cabang refleksi filosofis tentang bagaimana
(seharusnya) kita mengurus hidup bersama. Kembali merujuk pada Profesor Wolff (dari
bukunya yang lain, Introduction to Political Philosophy, hlm. 1-2), kita dapat memahami
bahwa:
“It has been said that there are only two questions in political philosophy; 'who gets
what?', and 'says who?' Not quite true, but close enough to be a useful starting-point. The
first of these questions is about the distribution of material goods, and of rights and
liberties. On what basis should people possess property? What rights and liberties should
they enjoy? The second question concerns the distribution of another good: political
power. Locke defined political power as 'the right of making laws with penalties of death,
and consequently all less penalties'. This probably goes further than we need, but we can
see the point. Political power includes the right to command others, and to subject them
to punishment if they disobey. Who should hold this power?
As soon as we reflect on these questions puzzles emerge. Is there any good reason
why one person should have more property than another? Are there any justified limits to
my liberty? And what should the relation be between political power and economic
success? In some countries few obtain political power unless they are already wealthy. In
others, those who gain political power soon find themselves rich. But should there be any
connection at all between possession of wealth and enjoyment of political power?
Indeed, political power is puzzling enough on its own. If someone has legitimate
political power over me then they have the right to force me to do certain things. But how
could another person justify the claim to have such rights over me? It often seems
outrageous that someone else should tell me what to do, worse still that they think they
are entitled to punish me if I disobey. Yet there is, of course, another side to this. Perhaps
I should also consider how others might behave—how unpleasant they could make my
life—if they were left unrestrained by the law and the threat of punishment. Reflecting on
this, perhaps there is something to be said, after all, for the existence of political power.
So we can identify with both the anarchist's plea for the autonomy of the individual, and
the authoritarian's claims for the power of the state.
One task for the political philosopher, then, is to determine the correct balance
between autonomy and authority, or, in other words, to determine the proper distribution
of political power. This example also illustrates what is distinctive about political
philosophy. Political philosophy is a normative discipline, meaning that it tries to establish
norms (rules or ideal standards). We can contrast the normative with the descriptive.
Descriptive studies attempt to find out how things are. Normative studies try to discover
how things should be: what is right, just, or morally correct. Politics can be studied from
both a descriptive and a normative standpoint.”

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 e. Dengan itu etika profesi hukum menyajikan, mengungkapkan, dan menerangkan
masalah-masalah etis yang dihadapi lawyers berdasarkan perspektif filsafat moral dan
politik;
f. Dalam kaitannya dengan pembelajaran ilmu hukum, masalah-masalah yang direfleksikan
oleh etika profesi hukum menjelaskan pula gambaran besar tentang masalah tentang
hakikat hubungan negara, warga negara, dan hukum.

8) … many of the classic cases that are frequently discussed in the English-speaking legal ethics
literature are from the United States, in part because it is a litigious society, but also because
many of the first generation of theoretical legal ethics scholars were Americans, including
Richard Wasserstrom, Deborah Rhode, Stephen Pepper, David Luban, Gerald Postema, William
Simon, and Thomas Shaffer.
9) … legal ethics having been made a compulsory subject in US law schools after the Watergate
scandal in the early 1970s.

a. Dua potongan teks di atas menggambarkan secara ringkas perkembangan scholarship

etika profesi hukum dalam konteks Amerika Serikat.
b. Bagaimana lahir dan berkembangnya legal scholarship etika profesi hukum di dalam
praksis hubungan hukum, masyarakat, dan negara di Indonesia?
c. Sebagai langkah permulaan untuk menjawab pertanyaan di atas, kita perlu memahami
beberapa poin, yakni:
i. Asal-mula praktik profesi advokat dan generasi pertama yuris Hindia-Belanda;
ii. Sejarah pendidikan tinggi hukum;
iii. Reformasi hukum dan masyarakat dari masa kolonial sampai pembentukan
negara-bangsa nasional;
iv. Perkembangan regulasi profesi hukum (perundang-undangan);
v. Yurisprudensi/studi kasus putusan-putusan hakim tentang kasus pelanggaran
hukum yang dilakukan oleh ahli hukum’’
vi. Keputusan/kasus pelanggaran kode perilaku di dalam ruang lingkup organisasi
profesi hukum tertentu (notaris, hakim, advokat, jaksa, dll.).

10) The point of the cases is to illustrate ethical issues, not legal ones.
11) As a result, in each jurisdiction, there is a body of law governing lawyers, which is a fascinating
subject in its own right.
a. Etika hukum berhimpitan dengan namun dapat dipilah dari “himpunan peraturan hukum
yang menata profesi hukum”;
b. Perhatikan pula poin 9.c.vi di atas, beri satu contoh kasus konkret pelanggaran kode
perilaku profesi hukum di Indonesia yang menggambarkan masalah etis, yang/meskipun
di dalamnya ada himpitan dengan masalah hukum (poin 9.c.v).