Standard Contract Clauses from the Perspective of Consumer Protection Law
Abstract
The legal relationship between business actors and consumers under Indonesian law is formally equal, yet consumers frequently occupy a weaker bargaining position because standard clauses (klausula baku) are drafted unilaterally by business actors before any agreement is reached. This condition raises two problems, namely how the concept and regulation of standard clauses operate within Indonesian consumer contract law, and how such clauses should be assessed from the perspective of Islamic contract law (akad), given that unilaterally imposed terms may conflict with the principle of mutual consent (an taradin minkum) and the prohibition of excessive uncertainty (gharar). This study aims to examine the concept and legal arrangement of standard clauses under Law Number 8 of 1999 concerning Consumer Protection and to analyze standard clauses from the perspective of Islamic contract law. The research applies a normative legal method with statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, drawing on primary legal materials and recent literature published between 2021 and 2025. The findings show that Article 18 of the Consumer Protection Law prohibits eight categories of exonerative clauses, and any clause that violates these provisions is void by operation of law, while comparative practice in the United Kingdom and the United States relies respectively on a statutory fairness test and the doctrine of unconscionability. From the perspective of Islamic contract law, standard clauses are permissible so long as they do not contain gharar and do not coerce consent, and the khiyar mechanism serves as a corrective instrument that positive consumer law alone does not provide.
