Abstract
The principle of freedom of contract under Article 1338 of the Indonesian Civil Code presumes that contracting parties hold an equal bargaining position. This premise collapses in the context of standard contracts, where business actors unilaterally draft every clause and present it to debtors on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, producing a merely illusory form of equality. This study examines the legal certainty of standard contracts from the perspective of freedom of contract, the positional relation between debtors and creditors, and the appropriate legal protection for debtors. A normative method is applied through philosophy approaches, supported by document study of primary and secondary legal materials, analyzed qualitatively. The findings show that formal legal certainty under Articles 1320 and 1338 of the Civil Code, despite limitations imposed by the Consumer Protection Law and Financial Services Authority Regulation No. 22 of 2023, has not dismantled the exploitative structure concealed behind the doctrine of market efficiency. The debtor-creditor relation is shown to be structurally asymmetrical and sustained through a hegemony of consciousness that normalizes inequality. Adequate legal protection requires a paradigm shift from formal certainty toward substantive justice, with John Rawls's principles of justice serving as the primary guide for drafting and testing standard clauses.
