JUSTICE ON PAPER, INJUSTICE IN PRACTICE: RETHINKING CONSUMER PROTECTION IN INDONESIA'S ONLINE MARKETPLACES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20414/js.v8i3.168Keywords:
consumer protection law, online marketplace disputes, distributive justice, corrective justice, Rawlsian fairness, Aristotelian legal philosophy, Indonesia e-commerceAbstract
Indonesian consumers keep losing money to non-conforming goods bought through online marketplaces, even though a consumer-protection framework already exists on paper. This article asks why that gap persists and how legal philosophy should guide the way responsibility for it is assigned. Using normative legal research, it reads Law No. 8 of 1999 on Consumer Protection and its implementing regulations against Aristotle's distinction between distributive and corrective justice and Rawlsian fairness. The analysis finds that losses persist because of information asymmetry, weak consumer bargaining power, limited access to evidence, and enforcement that rarely reaches small-value disputes, leaving the justice consumers experience well short of the justice the statute promises. Responsibility for non-conforming goods should track who actually controls a transaction's risk, which means marketplaces cannot treat themselves as neutral intermediaries. The article concludes that stronger enforcement, cheaper dispute channels, and provisional refunds based on reasonable initial evidence would close much of that gap, provided they are balanced against legal certainty and the consumer's own duty of good faith.
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