Author Guidlines
AUTHOR GUIDELINES
1. General Requirements
Al-Adalah: Jurnal Hukum dan Politik Islam is published twice a year, in January and July. The journal publishes original research on contemporary transformations in Indonesian law, constitutional governance, public policy, Islamic law, and socio-legal studies.
To support the journal's international academic orientation and readership, all manuscripts must be written in clear and academically appropriate English.
Submitted manuscripts must:
- fall within the journal's Focus and Scope;
- present an original and significant scholarly contribution;
- have not been previously published in any language or format;
- not be under consideration by another journal or publisher;
- comply with the journal's research and publication ethics policies; and
- demonstrate the relevance of the study to broader regional, comparative, or international legal scholarship.
Manuscripts that merely describe legislation, court decisions, government policies, or local events without a clear analytical and scholarly contribution will not be considered for publication.
2. Types of Manuscripts
The journal accepts the following types of manuscripts:
Research Articles
Research articles report the results of empirical, socio-legal, doctrinal, comparative, or interdisciplinary legal research. They must present a clearly defined research problem, an appropriate research method, a systematic analysis, and an original contribution to legal scholarship.
Review Articles
Review articles critically examine and synthesize developments in a specific field of law, governance, Islamic law, or socio-legal studies. A review article must go beyond summarizing existing publications and should identify theoretical developments, methodological limitations, unresolved questions, and directions for future research.
The journal does not ordinarily publish short opinion pieces, descriptive reports, classroom assignments, non-academic essays, or manuscripts that merely reproduce the contents of statutes and regulations.
3. Manuscript Length
Research and review articles should normally contain between 6,000 and 9,000 words, excluding the abstract, references, tables, figures, and appendices.
Manuscripts outside this range may be considered when the length is justified by the nature and contribution of the research. Authors should avoid unnecessary repetition, lengthy descriptions of generally known legal provisions, and excessive quotation.
4. Manuscript Preparation
Manuscripts must be submitted in Microsoft Word format using the journal's official manuscript template.
The general formatting requirements are:
- paper size: A4;
- margins: 2.5 cm on all sides;
- main text: Times New Roman, 12 point;
- line spacing: 1.5;
- paragraph alignment: justified;
- footnotes: Times New Roman, 10 point, single-spaced; and
- page numbers: placed at the bottom of each page.
The journal uses the Chicago Manual of Style: Notes and Bibliography system, with bibliographic citations presented in footnotes.
Footnote numbers must be inserted automatically using the footnote function in Microsoft Word. Authors must not type footnote numbers manually.
Footnote numbers should:
- be written in superscript;
- normally appear at the end of a sentence or clause;
- be placed after punctuation marks; and
- be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript.
Footnotes may contain bibliographic citations and brief explanatory information. Lengthy arguments, substantive analysis, essential research findings, and information necessary to understand the manuscript must be presented in the main text rather than in footnotes.
Authors must ensure that footnote formatting is consistent throughout the manuscript.
14. Quotations
Direct quotations must reproduce the original source accurately and must be accompanied by an appropriate footnote citation.
Short quotations should be incorporated into the main paragraph and enclosed in quotation marks.
A quotation of approximately one hundred words or more should normally be presented as a separate indented block quotation without quotation marks, in accordance with the journal's manuscript template.
The source of a block quotation must be provided in a footnote placed after the final punctuation mark of the quotation.
Where words or sentences are omitted from a quotation, the omission must be indicated by an ellipsis enclosed in square brackets:
[...]
Words added by the author to clarify the meaning of a quotation must also be enclosed in square brackets.
Authors must preserve the original meaning and context of all quoted material. A quotation must not be altered in a manner that misrepresents the position or intention of the original author.
The use of [sic] should be limited to situations where it is necessary to indicate that an apparent error occurs in the original source.
Authors should avoid excessive quotation. Legislation, judicial decisions, policy documents, and academic publications should be quoted only when their precise wording is necessary for the analysis. Where the exact wording is not essential, authors should accurately paraphrase the source and provide an appropriate footnote.
15. Citation Style
15.1 General Citation System
Al-Adalah: Jurnal Hukum dan Politik Islam uses the Chicago Manual of Style, Notes and Bibliography system, using full-note citations.
Sources must be cited in consecutively numbered footnotes. The journal does not use parenthetical author-date citations in the main text.
The first citation of a source must provide complete bibliographic information in a full footnote. Subsequent citations to the same source should use a shortened note.
Authors must also provide a bibliography at the end of the manuscript containing all sources cited in the footnotes, except materials that are not ordinarily included in a bibliography under the Chicago system.
Authors are strongly encouraged to use reference-management software such as Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote and to select the appropriate Chicago Manual of Style, Full Note output style.
The use of reference-management software does not remove the authors' responsibility to verify the accuracy and consistency of every citation.
15.2 Full Note and Shortened Note
A source cited for the first time must be presented in full-note form.
First Full Note
- Author's full name, Title of the Work (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), page number.
Subsequent Shortened Note
- Author's surname, Shortened Title, page number.
Authors should not repeatedly reproduce the full citation after its first appearance unless necessary to avoid ambiguity.
The journal recommends shortened notes rather than the use of ibid. to reduce ambiguity when manuscripts are edited or reformatted.
15.3 Books
One Author
Full note:
- Mark Tushnet, Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018), 45.
Shortened note:
- Tushnet, Comparative Constitutional Law, 48.
Bibliography:
Tushnet, Mark. Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018.
Two Authors
Full note:
- Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 76.
Shortened note:
- Ginsburg and Huq, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, 82.
Bibliography:
Ginsburg, Tom, and Aziz Z. Huq. How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Four or More Authors
For a work with four or more authors, the footnote may provide the first author's name followed by “et al.” The bibliography should include the names of all authors where practicable.
Full note:
- David S. Law et al., Constitutionalism in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 115.
Shortened note:
- Law et al., Constitutionalism in Context, 119.
15.4 Chapter in an Edited Book
Full note:
- Ran Hirschl, “The Strategic Foundations of Constitutions,” in Social and Political Foundations of Constitutions, ed. Denis J. Galligan and Mila Versteeg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 157.
Shortened note:
- Hirschl, “Strategic Foundations,” 162.
Bibliography:
Hirschl, Ran. “The Strategic Foundations of Constitutions.” In Social and Political Foundations of Constitutions, edited by Denis J. Galligan and Mila Versteeg, 157–181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
15.5 Journal Articles
Full note:
- Tom Ginsburg and Mila Versteeg, “Why Do Countries Adopt Constitutional Review?,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 30, no. 3 (2014): 587, https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewt008.
Shortened note:
- Ginsburg and Versteeg, “Constitutional Review,” 592.
Bibliography:
Ginsburg, Tom, and Mila Versteeg. “Why Do Countries Adopt Constitutional Review?” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 30, no. 3 (2014): 587–622. https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewt008.
A journal article citation must include:
- author's name;
- article title;
- journal title;
- volume number;
- issue number, where available;
- publication year;
- cited page in the footnote;
- complete page range in the bibliography; and
- DOI in the format
https://doi.org/..., where available.
15.6 Online Journal Articles
An article published online should be cited in the same manner as a printed journal article. A DOI must be used instead of a general webpage address whenever a DOI is available.
Authors must not write duplicate DOI prefixes, such as:
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/...
15.7 Reports and Institutional Publications
Full note:
- World Bank, Indonesia Public Expenditure Review 2020: Spending for Better Results (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020), 34, https://doi.org/10.1596/33954.
Shortened note:
- World Bank, Indonesia Public Expenditure Review, 39.
Bibliography:
World Bank. Indonesia Public Expenditure Review 2020: Spending for Better Results. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1596/33954.
Where no individual author is identified, the responsible institution or organization should be treated as the author.
15.8 Websites
Websites should be used selectively and only when the information cannot be obtained from a more authoritative scholarly, legal, or institutional source.
Full note:
- Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia, “History of the Constitutional Court,” accessed June 10, 2026, website address.
Shortened note:
- Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia, “History.”
Bibliography:
Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia. “History of the Constitutional Court.” Accessed June 10, 2026. Website address.
An access date should be provided when:
- the webpage has no identifiable publication or revision date;
- the content is designed to change over time; or
- the cited material is not permanently archived.
Authors should avoid citing blogs, commercial webpages, anonymous content, and other sources whose authority or reliability cannot be established.
15.9 Newspaper and News Articles
News sources may be used as primary or contextual material but should not replace relevant academic literature.
Full note:
- Author's Full Name, “Title of the Article,” Name of Newspaper, January 15, 2026, website address.
Shortened note:
- Author's Surname, “Shortened Article Title.”
News items may be omitted from the bibliography when they are cited only occasionally, although authors should apply one consistent approach throughout the manuscript.
15.10 Theses and Dissertations
Full note:
- Author's Full Name, “Title of the Thesis or Dissertation” (PhD diss., Name of University, Year), page number.
Shortened note:
- Author's Surname, “Shortened Title,” page number.
Bibliography:
Author's Surname, First Name. “Title of the Thesis or Dissertation.” PhD diss., Name of University, Year.
Unpublished undergraduate papers and routine classroom assignments should not ordinarily be used as principal academic references.
15.11 Conference Papers
Full note:
- Author's Full Name, “Title of Paper” (paper presented at the Name of Conference, City, Country, Date), page number.
Shortened note:
- Author's Surname, “Shortened Title,” page number.
Where a conference paper has subsequently been published in a journal or edited volume, authors should cite the published version unless the conference version contains materially different content.
15.12 Indonesian Legislation
Indonesian legislation should be cited by its official title and number. An accurate English translation may be used in the main text, but the legal identity of the instrument must remain clear.
First footnote:
- Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 24 of 2003 concerning the Constitutional Court, State Gazette of the Republic of Indonesia of 2003 Number 98, art. 10.
Subsequent footnote:
- Law Number 24 of 2003, art. 24.
Where an official English translation is unavailable, authors may provide their own translation and indicate that it is the authors' translation.
Legislative citations should include, where applicable:
- type of legislation;
- official number;
- year;
- official title;
- State Gazette or other official publication information; and
- specific article, paragraph, or point cited.
Indonesian legal provisions should be cited consistently as:
- Article 28;
- Article 28 paragraph (1); and
- Article 28 paragraph (1) point (a).
15.13 Regulations and Other Legal Instruments
Example:
- Government Regulation of the Republic of Indonesia Number 21 of 2020 concerning Large-Scale Social Restrictions in the Context of Accelerating the Handling of Coronavirus Disease 2019, art. 4.
Ministerial regulations, presidential regulations, regional regulations, and other legal instruments should be cited using their complete official titles at first mention. A consistent shortened title may be used thereafter.
15.14 Court Decisions
Court decisions must be cited with sufficient information to allow readers to identify and retrieve the decision.
A citation should include:
- name of the court;
- decision number;
- name of the case or parties, where applicable;
- date of decision, where relevant; and
- paragraph or page cited.
First footnote:
- Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia, Decision Number 91/PUU-XVIII/2020, November 25, 2021, para. 3.18.4.
Subsequent footnote:
- Constitutional Court Decision Number 91/PUU-XVIII/2020, para. 3.20.1.
Where decisions do not use paragraph numbers, authors should cite the relevant page.
Court decisions may be placed in a separate section of the bibliography titled Cases or Court Decisions when numerous decisions are cited.
15.15 International Treaties and Instruments
Example:
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted December 16, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171, art. 18.
International treaties should be cited using their official title, adoption date, treaty-series reference where available, and relevant article.
United Nations documents and other international instruments should include their official document number whenever available.
15.16 Interviews
Interviews conducted by the authors should be cited in footnotes with due regard for research ethics and participant confidentiality.
Identified interview:
- Interview with Full Name, Position or Relevant Capacity, City, March 15, 2026.
Anonymous interview:
- Interview with Participant 7, local government official, March 18, 2026.
Interviews and personal communications are generally cited in footnotes and are not included in the bibliography unless they form part of a publicly accessible archive.
Authors must use pseudonyms or coded identifiers where required by informed consent, ethical approval, or confidentiality obligations.
15.17 Sources with No Identified Author
Where no individual author is identified, the institution or organization responsible for the source should be cited as the author.
The term “Anonymous” should be used only when the work itself is expressly published under that designation.
15.18 Multiple Sources in One Footnote
Several sources may be cited in a single footnote when they support the same statement. Each source should be separated by a semicolon.
Authors should avoid placing an excessive number of sources in one footnote. Citations must be relevant and must directly support the statement to which they are attached.
15.19 Repeated Citations
For a source that has already been cited, authors should use:
- the author's surname;
- a shortened version of the title; and
- the relevant page or paragraph number.
Example:
- Mark Tushnet, Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018), 45.
- Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 76.
- Tushnet, Comparative Constitutional Law, 51.
The shortened title must remain sufficiently clear to distinguish the source from other works by the same author.
15.20 Citation Accuracy
Authors are responsible for ensuring that:
- every citation refers to an actual and accessible source;
- names, titles, dates, volumes, issues, and pages are accurate;
- quotations correspond exactly to the cited source;
- pinpoint page or paragraph numbers are provided where appropriate;
- DOI links are valid;
- URLs lead to the cited content;
- cited court decisions and legislation can be identified; and
- no reference has been fabricated or generated without verification.
The editorial team may request copies of sources that cannot be verified.
16. Bibliography
Every manuscript must include a bibliography at the end of the main text.
The bibliography must follow the Chicago Manual of Style, Notes and Bibliography system.
It must include all academic publications and other bibliographic sources cited in the footnotes. Sources not cited in the manuscript must not be included merely to lengthen the bibliography.
Bibliographic entries must be arranged alphabetically according to the surname of the first author or the name of the responsible institution.
The bibliography should not use numbering or bullet points.
Where the manuscript cites a substantial number of legal materials, the bibliography may be divided into appropriate categories, such as:
- Books and Book Chapters;
- Journal Articles;
- Reports and Other Publications;
- Legislation;
- Court Decisions;
- International Legal Instruments; and
- Online Sources.
The use of categories must be consistent and should improve the clarity of the bibliography.
Authors are expected to:
- use relevant and authoritative academic sources;
- prioritize peer-reviewed journal articles;
- engage with current international scholarship;
- include foundational works where academically necessary;
- use primary legal materials accurately;
- ensure that all sources cited in footnotes are properly identified;
- include DOI links in the format
https://doi.org/...whenever available; - avoid predatory, unreliable, fabricated, or unverifiable publications; and
- verify all bibliographic information against the original publication.
At least 50% of the scholarly references should normally consist of peer-reviewed journal articles. This percentage does not include legislation, court decisions, treaties, interviews, or other primary legal materials.
A numerical requirement does not replace the need for relevance and quality. Authors must not add unrelated journal articles merely to satisfy the recommended proportion.
Authors should prioritize recent scholarship published during approximately the previous ten years while continuing to cite older foundational sources where necessary.
The bibliography should not rely predominantly on:
- textbooks;
- student papers;
- non-peer-reviewed conference materials;
- news articles;
- blogs;
- commercial webpages;
- general reference websites; or
- unpublished materials that cannot be verified.
National legal materials must be accompanied by relevant academic literature. A manuscript consisting predominantly of legislation and court decisions without engagement with legal scholarship will not meet the journal's publication standards.
Bibliography Examples
Book
Tushnet, Mark. Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018.
Journal Article
Ginsburg, Tom, and Mila Versteeg. “Why Do Countries Adopt Constitutional Review?” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 30, no. 3 (2014): 587–622. https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewt008.
Chapter in an Edited Book
Hirschl, Ran. “The Strategic Foundations of Constitutions.” In Social and Political Foundations of Constitutions, edited by Denis J. Galligan and Mila Versteeg, 157–181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Institutional Report
World Bank. Indonesia Public Expenditure Review 2020: Spending for Better Results. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1596/33954.
17. Author Self-Citation
Authors may cite their own previous publications when those publications are directly relevant to the research question, method, argument, or findings of the submitted manuscript.
Self-citations must follow the same Chicago full-note format as citations to other authors.
Authors must not omit their names from their previous publications or replace their identities with expressions such as “Author” or “Author's previous work” in the final published version.
During double-blind peer review, self-citations must be written neutrally and must not disclose the identity of the authors.
For example, authors should write:
Previous research has examined the implementation of the policy in regional government institutions.¹
Authors should not write:
In our previous research, we demonstrated that the policy had failed.
Unnecessary, excessive, irrelevant, or strategically inserted self-citations are not permitted. Authors must not cite their own publications merely to increase personal citation counts or create an artificial appearance of continuity with previous studies.
Editors and reviewers must not require authors to add citations to their publications unless those works are directly relevant and academically necessary.
The editorial team may request the removal of irrelevant or excessive self-citations.
24. Submission Checklist
Before submitting a manuscript, authors must ensure that:
- the manuscript falls within the journal's Focus and Scope;
- the manuscript is written in clear academic English;
- the manuscript is original and is not under consideration by another journal or publisher;
- the title page and anonymous manuscript have been uploaded separately;
- the manuscript contains all required sections;
- all author-identifying information has been removed from the anonymous manuscript and its file properties;
- the research problem, research gap, originality, and scholarly contribution are stated clearly;
- the research method is explained in sufficient detail;
- empirical findings are supported by appropriate evidence;
- doctrinal analysis goes beyond the description of legislation;
- Indonesian legal developments are connected to wider regional or international academic debates;
- bibliographic citations are presented in consecutively numbered footnotes;
- the first citation of each source uses the Chicago full-note format;
- subsequent citations use an appropriate shortened-note format;
- parenthetical author-date citations have been removed;
- the bibliography follows the Chicago Notes and Bibliography system;
- every bibliographic source has been cited in the manuscript;
- every source cited in the manuscript has been included in the bibliography, where required;
- pinpoint page, paragraph, or article numbers have been provided where applicable;
- names, titles, publication details, legislation, and court decisions have been verified;
- all DOI links have been checked and written in the format
https://doi.org/...; - URLs lead directly to the cited material;
- no citation or reference has been fabricated or left unverified;
- permissions have been obtained for copyrighted tables, figures, photographs, maps, or other materials;
- ethical approval and informed consent have been reported where applicable;
- conflicts of interest and funding have been disclosed;
- a data availability statement has been provided where applicable;
- an authorship contribution statement has been included;
- the use of generative artificial intelligence has been disclosed where required; and
- the manuscript has been carefully proofread for language, citation, and formatting consistency.
Submissions that do not comply with these requirements may be returned to the authors for technical correction or declined without external peer review.
