<![CDATA[Land disputes in Indonesia require a clear distinction between ownership rights, the state’s authority to control land, and physical possession, as each entails different legal consequences. This study examines these distinctions and their implications for evidence assessment and land dispute resolution. It employs a normative legal method using statutory and conceptual approaches, supplemented by a review of case-related literature. Primary and secondary legal materials were collected through library research and analysed qualitatively through grammatical and systematic interpretation. The findings indicate that ownership rights confer legally protected powers subject to statutory restrictions and the social function of land, whereas the state’s authority to control land constitutes public regulatory authority rather than private ownership. Physical possession does not automatically establish ownership, but it may have evidentiary significance when the applicable legal requirements are satisfied. Land certificates constitute strong, rather than absolute, evidence and must be assessed alongside the history of acquisition, the correspondence between physical and juridical data, and the legality of administrative procedures. The study concludes that legally sound dispute resolution requires continuity between identifying the legal basis of claims, evaluating evidence, selecting the competent forum, and implementing the resulting settlement or judgment. Its contribution is a normative basis for reconciling legal certainty with rights protection, without claiming to establish the empirical effectiveness of existing mechanisms.]]>
