<![CDATA[Law enforcement in Indonesia is frequently confronted with tension between legal certainty, public order, and the community's sense of justice. This tension is clearly reflected in the theft of three cacao pods by an elderly farmer named Minah in Banyumas, Central Java, in 2009, as recorded in Purwokerto District Court Decision No. 247/Pid.B/2009/PN.Pwt. The case drew significant public attention because the formal legal process was carried through to trial despite the negligible economic loss involved. This study aims to analyze law enforcement in that case from the perspectives of legal philosophy and legal sociology. A normative juridical method is employed, combined with conceptual, philosophical, and case approaches, relying on library research of primary and secondary legal materials. The findings show that a purely legal-formal approach tends to disregard proportionality and social context, thereby creating disharmony between legal certainty and substantive justice, as reflected in Radbruch's three basic legal values and Aristotle's theory of corrective justice. From a sociological perspective, law enforced without regard for values living within society, particularly for vulnerable groups such as poor and elderly farmers, risks losing its social legitimacy, in line with Roscoe Pound's sociological jurisprudence and Satjipto Rahardjo's progressive law. The study concludes that the Minah case became an important catalyst for the adoption of restorative justice in Indonesia, later accommodated in Supreme Court Regulation No. 2 of 2012 and further strengthened in the new Penal Code.]]>
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