The Anomaly of Social Wealth Realization Following Reinstatement of Negative Fictitious Disputes in Administrative Court

Abstrak

Bureaucratic reform in Indonesia has been designed to strengthen good governance, improve the ease of doing business, and maximize social welfare through efficient public administration. One of the major legal transformations in administrative law was the shift from lex silentia negativa to lex silentia positiva under Law Number 30 of 2014 on Government Administration, which interpreted governmental silence as approval rather than rejection, thereby accelerating legal certainty for citizens and investors. This reform was further reinforced by Law Number 6 of 2023 on Job Creation, which shortened the response period for administrative decisions to five working days. However, the absence of implementing regulations concerning the formalization of positive fictitious decisions created a legal vacuum regarding enforcement mechanisms. In response, the Supreme Court issued Supreme Court Circular Letter Number 2 of 2024, effectively reviving the doctrine of negative fictitious disputes under Article 3 of the State Administrative Court Law. This study examines the anomaly arising from the reimplementation of negative fictitious dispute mechanisms within the framework of bureaucratic reform and social wealth maximization. Using a normative juridical method with statutory, conceptual, and historical approaches, this article analyzes whether the reinstatement of lex silentia negativa contradicts the reform agenda aimed at legal efficiency and investment facilitation. The findings indicate that the reactivation of negative fictitious disputes risks prolonging legal uncertainty, weakening bureaucratic responsiveness, and undermining the principle of wealth maximization as conceptualized by Richard Posner. Therefore, immediate regulatory harmonization is required to ensure legal certainty and preserve the objectives of bureaucratic reform in Indonesia.