ABSTRACT
The influential international framework informs the state legal system since states need to adjust their legal framework once they subscribe to the international agenda. Law-making in family law involves conflicts between liberal and conservative ideas on marriage, family, and sexuality. The tension between these ideas was at the heart of a series of recent judicial reviews of the 1974 Marriage Law at the Constitutional Court. The comparison between West Java and Bali indicates that religion and kinship custom are the main explanatory factors for different motivations and impacts of child marriage. For instance, in West Java with mainly Muslim populations, the most urgent reason to marry is to avoid zinah, while in Bali, pre-marital sexual intercourse is somewhat accepted and considered ‘common'. In Bali specifically, when marriage dispensation cannot provide a solution to extra-marital pregnancies, girls' families sometimes prosecute the boy for sexual intercourse.
