Vollenhoven, Cornelis Van (1874–1933)

Cornelis van Vollenhoven, a Dutch jurist, was the founder of the school of adat law that advocated empirical research on customary law in Indonesia. In Leiden, the Netherlands, van Vollenhoven studied Semitic languages, law, and political science, obtaining a doctorate in the latter two disciplines in 1898. Three years later, he took up a Leiden chair in the “Adat law of the Netherlands East Indies,” which he retained until his death. While not the first Dutch [Page 1565]scholar to use the notion of adat, he was the first to elevate its study to a science, and he oversaw one of the first rigorous and widespread attempts to record and to seek recognition for customary law in the world, supervising the writing of over 20 dissertations and a library on adat.

A profuse author, van Vollenhoven wrote Miskenningen van het adatrecht (Misconceptions of Adat Law) in 1909, in which he advocated usage of indigenous terminology, instead of Western concepts, thus foreshadowing the Paul Bohannan–Max Gluckmann debate of the 1950s and 1960s. He also argued that his work was not about impeding Indonesia's development by preserving adat curiosa, but that it was about offering the thorough knowledge of indigenous law and conceptions that are essential to good government. His adat guide in 1910 emphasized the importance of empirical, long-term, and context-sensitive research and finding both rules and their exceptions. His magnum opus, the three-volume Het Adatrecht Van Nederlandsch-Indië (Adat Law of the Netherlands East Indies) (1918–1933) introduced the notion of 19 legal circles. While it was essentially a classificatory exercise based on field research and archival work, it also sketched the sociopolitical background to local customs and drew attention to their divergence.

In addition to his scientific work, van Vollenhoven was active in advocating the formal recognition of adat, and successfully opposed colonial attempts toward legal unification, and toward negating the existence of preexisting customary claims to land. Although he had published Een adatwetboekje (Specimen Code of Adat Law) in 1910, he spoke out against codification in later years, arguing that this would lead to lawyers' law and stifling of flexible customs. A truly universalistic jurist, he also published on and advocated the development of international law and—inspired by Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius (1583–1645)—argued for an international police force to enforce decisions of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Today, van Vollenhoven's legacy in Dutch legal anthropology continues, illustrated by the debates on the future of adat that flared up in Indonesia after the riots of 1998. The English-speaking world was only introduced to (part of) his work in 1981, at a time when many of the concepts that he pioneered had long come to be generally accepted.