Legal Literacy - This article reviews the meaning, history, and development of Indonesian legal system from the pre-colonial era to the reformation era. It also discusses the influence of customary law, Dutch and Japanese colonial law, to the formation of a national legal system based on Pancasila and the protection of human rights. This article also describes Indonesia's efforts in creating a legal system that reflects national identity and social diversity, with reference sources from experts and Indonesian legal history literature.

The Indonesian legal system or the structure of Indonesian law is the order or order of Indonesian laws to protect the interests of the Indonesian people. The Indonesian legal system is positive law in which there are certain legal rules that once applied and have been replaced by new legal rules of the same type and apply as new positive law.

The state of the Indonesian legal system during the pre-colonial period was closely related to the situation and conditions of the Indonesian nation at that time. Indonesia at that time was still called Nusantara, in the form of a kingdom led by a king, queen, sultan, or leader of the local indigenous community. The government was monarchical and aristocratic, consisting of nobles or feudal lords.

The king as the leader of the kingdom developed languages ​​and regulations containing the king's orders and behavioral order for his citizens. According to Slamet Muljana, the Majapahit kingdom during the reign of Prabu Hayam Wuruk had made legal regulations and run courts, as stated in the manuscript Nagarakretagama.

The Indonesian people at that time lived in two social bonds, namely feudal bonds centered in the kingdom and village bonds, and the two were correlated. Indeed, the king's power extended politically to the village, but because it was far from the kingdom, the kingdom's influence was not so strong. Therefore, the people who lived in the village also developed patterns of interaction and social relations according to their needs.

These two bonds form institutions or legal norms called customary law, both in feudal bonds in the kingdom and village bonds. According to Van Vollenhoven, customary law is law that does not originate from regulations made by the government and its instruments of power.

At that time, besides customary law, Islamic law also applied along with the entry of Islam into the archipelago. Islamic law applies to its adherents. However, not all fields of Islamic law apply in society. Only the fields of Islamic marriage law and Islamic inheritance law apply. Meanwhile, Islamic criminal law is not applied in social life.