Legal Technocrat with Many Faces
Mochtar Kusumaatmadja occupies a special position in Indonesia’s development in legal thinking and education. Educator, thinker, practitioner, and legal bureaucrat: he was that rare person who personified all of the above.
Tempo
June 11, 2021
I FIRST met Professor Mochtar Kusumaatmadja in person in early 1988 in my first class in international law, the specialization I chose as a law student at Bandung’s Padjadjaran University. At that time, he was still foreign affairs minister. Only five minutes into his lecture, I was already mumbling to myself: “This is a real professor.” He spoke coherently, he was erudite, and very much in command of the material.
That first i
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