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Set to leave the court after 10 years of service, Maria is considered to be among the few court justices who holds progressive views.

The court sent a letter to Jokowi on Feb. 13 informing the President that Maria’s second and final term was set to end soon, and therefore the President would need to pick her successor within the next six months, court spokesperson Fajar Laksono said.

The President, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court have the right to each pick three justices through a transparent nomination system, with public participation.

“Ideally, a successor should be appointed two months before a justice’s tenure ends […] to ensure that none of the justice seats are left vacant,” Fajar said recently.

Maria’s departure has raised concerns over the fate of the male-dominated judicial institution, which has heard cases that intertwine with gender, children and minority-related issues.

As a professor at the University of Indonesia, Maria has years of experience in law. However, what makes her different from other sitting justices is that she represents women, minority religious groups and the disabled.

Maria, the only Catholic on the bench, suffered from polio as a child and walked with a limp.

“With such a background, Maria serves a unique position at the MK,” constitutional law expert Feri Amsari said. “It will be very difficult to find a figure like her, although there are many names with great expertise [in law].”

Maria has been lauded for persistently voicing her pluralist views, as reflected in some of her dissenting opinions, for instance, in a controversial petition on the Pornography Law in March 2010. At the time, Maria dissented against a court ruling that upheld the law on the grounds that the definition of pornography was open to various interpretations.

A month later, in another ruling that upheld the controversial Blasphemy Law, Maria went against eight male justices, arguing that the law must be scrapped since it often triggered arbitrary actions in its implementation.

When the court rejected a petition that sought to raise the minimum age for women to marry from 16 to 18 years of age in 2015, Maria was again the only justice with a dissenting opinion.

Maria’s departure from the bench leaves only two justices considered to be consistent in delivering progressive views: I Dewa Gede Palguna and Saldi Isra, both of whom were appointed by Jokowi .

The three justices, along with Manahan Sitompul and Suhartoyo, cast last December a decisive five to four vote to reject a judicial review petition filed by conservative academics who sought to criminalize consensual sex outside of marriage and gay sex.

Erasmus Napitupulu from the Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, a think-tank that has filed various petitions with the court, said tough challenges awaited Jokowi in picking a nominee with qualities similar to those of Maria.