Normative Conflict Between the Right to Freedom of Expression and Institutional Social Discrimination Against Tattoo Practices

Rizxki Sugiarto, Slamet Suhartono

Abstract


Tattoo practices in Indonesia face restrictions imposed across various institutions, ranging from explicit institutional regulations within the Indonesian Armed Forces and National Police to inconsistent civil service recruitment announcements and internal policies in educational and private institutions, without a coherent legal foundation at the level of statutory regulation. This research aims to examine the legal legitimacy of such restrictive policies based on four cumulative principles in international human rights law, namely legality, legitimate aim, necessity, and proportionality, while also formulating an ideal direction for institutional policy through a comparative law approach. This research employs a normative juridical method using statutory, conceptual, and comparative law approaches, examining tattoo policies in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The findings indicate that current tattoo restriction policies generally fail to meet human rights legitimacy standards and constitute discriminatory practices, with the Armed Forces and Police holding a comparatively stronger legal basis than civil service, educational, and private institutions, which fail to satisfy all four principles simultaneously. 

Keywords


freedom of expression; discrimination; tattoo policy; proportionality; ius constituendum

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24132715

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