More than 100 days have passed since the investigator of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), Novel Baswedan, was doused with hard water. State apparatus and government are asked to act decisively to dismantle the evil conspiracy behind it, while we are invited to solidarity so that more dare to fight corruptors. But what exactly is the logical connection between the two things? To answer it requires building an ethical argument in the way of thinking about law and eradicating corruption. What is the justification for law enforcement commitments and efforts in the Novel case? What can drive the seriousness of taking care of the Novel case? Therein lies the role of morality in law enforcement to protect the rights of citizens.

The event of splashing hard water into Novel's face becomes a hot topic of discussion in our society. Not to forget, the legal academics have a voice. From the perspective of state administration, it is stated that the watering is an attack to weaken the KPK as an institution. Thus, a solution is proposed to strengthen the status, namely the legitimacy of KPK institutions through and based on the written constitution (1945 Constitution) and KPK management office immunity from criminalization. Other academic perspectives state the need for protection of the physical security of law enforcement officers from terror and threats. The mechanisms and legal validity of such protection may be adopted from a number of international legal instruments. The implementation solution is by establishing a new institution with special authority, or reshaping existing institutions.

 
Moral Evaluation in Law

From the official statements to the above legal academics, it appears not only a demand that the hard-water sprayer of Novel be tried, but also an affirmation of the corruption eradication commitment. But more than that, every event contains value and invites moral evaluation. In the case of Novel, there is a reflection on the meaning of legal value. For that, we need to sort out some of the variables of legal philosophy problems in the events that befell Novel, then identify the moral principles contained in the law eradication of corruption in the country.

The first variable is an event experienced by Novel himself, his face was watered hard when he returned home from dawn prayer. The second variable is the KPK as a political institution working to eradicate corruption and enforce the law, within the corridor of legislation. This is referred to as a variable of institutional practice. The third variable is the legal ideals in the eradication of corruption, as embodied in the sequence of rights, duties, and responsibilities of every citizen to achieve the goals of life in the state of Indonesia, namely prosperity and happiness together. We can call it the legal purpose variable. The first variable is a non-legal fact variable, while the second and third variables present legal facts.

To see the relationship between the three variables above, we need to wear theoretical glasses. The great thinker of law, Ronald Dworkin (1931-2013), has inspired a way of thinking that sees law as an interpretive concept. A follower of the late Professor Dworkin, Nicos Stavropoulos, now a lecturer at the Oxford Law School, has helped explain the practical meaning of legal interpretation. Viewed interpretively, the variables of non-legal facts and the above legal facts are related to each other because of a moral principle. In the context of eradicating corruption in this country, the moral principle in question expresses the moral fact (the existence of the variable of law objectives) that justifies the legal facts (the existence of the institutional practice variables of the KPK and the variable of legal objectives).

In the context of national legal tradition, such moral facts have been declared through the principle of the State of Law. With the role of moral principle, the principle of the State of Law is the reasoning of our nation about adab. In the course of socio-political dynamics, we have also picked such reasoning through the momentum of the 1998 Reformation. The interpretive theory teaches that the ideal of the State of Law creates a normative power, namely respecting rights and responsibilities in institutional practice of corruption eradication and law enforcement. The State of Law is not simply a state that has a bunch of rules of law and then upholds it through a process undertaken by state apparatuses. Through this idea, there is also a message for the experts, that is not to regard the moral idea in law as the norm of truth number two or as a mere imperative, rather than the sophistication of other analytical observations about the institution of law and the eradication of corruption in the country.

The watering of hard water against the Novel is an insult to moral principles in law. In contrast, the response to the Novel case is a form of affirming the principle. That's it