Indonesia’s Commercial Court is a semi-specialist Court. It handles intellectual property and bankruptcy cases. However, while this might create an expectation that Judges are technically skilled, this is not necessarily the case. A program of rotation of Judges means that the bench often has limited IP experience.
The Chief Justice of the Commercial Court generally serves a term of two years. Sitting Justices generally serve the Court for three years before being rotated out. And this program of rotation is not confined to Indonesia’s five Commercial Courts (which are in Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Makassar and Semarang) - Judges can be transferred to the District Courts, High Courts, and others. There are various training programs (both domestically and internationally sponsored) in place that seek to improve the specialist knowledge of the Commercial Court bench. However, as long as the tenure of Judges in the Commercial Court is limited by this program of rotation, the programs will have limited effect.
Of course there are good reasons for having a program of rotating Judges, one of which is to reduce the susceptibility of the Court to corrupt approaches. Rotating Commercial Court Justices among the five Commercial Courts only - so they could continue to apply their specialist knowledge - would appear to be an acceptable solution. But as yet, there do not appear to be any plans to change the current system.
