JAKARTA: In an attempt to reduce the massive backlog of

JAKARTA: In an attempt to reduce the massive backlog of appeals waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court, a legal practitioner suggested on Friday that restrictions be placed on the type of cases the could be brought before the highest court in the land.

"The Supreme Court since the beginning could have limited the number of incoming appeal cases depending on their substance," lawyer Bambang Widjajanto said while commenting on the backlog of 16,000 appeals waiting to be heard by the country's highest court.

He said that only a small percentage (between 10 percent and 20 percent) of appeal cases raised questions of law, with the vast majority (between 80 percent and 90 percent) only being concerned with questions of fact.

"It's not against the legislation to restrict appeals to the Supreme Court solely to those concerned with questions of law," he said.

Bambang suggested that the Supreme Court's workload could be reduced by only allowing criminal appeals in the case of convictions where sentences of five-years imprisonment or more had been imposed.

Another measure would be to establish "a special task force" to vet the cases that were currently in the pipeline.

Chief Justice Bagir Manan told a plenary meeting of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Annual Session on Thursday that despite the high productivity of the justices, there were still some 16,000 cases awaiting the attention of the Supreme Court.--Antara