The Extent of the Authority of the Constitutional Court of Kuwait to Annul an Elected Parliament: The Cases of the 2012 Parliaments

Abstract

The Kuwaiti Constitutional Court annulled two elected parliaments in the same year. The court annulled the National Assembly that was elected in February 2012 after four months of its election 1 , and the National Assembly that was elected in December 2012 after six months of its election 2 . The two decisions had a major impact on the extent of the court’s authority to nullify elected parliaments due to wrong governmental measures which have nothing to do with any parliamentary actions. The legal access to the Constitutional Court to examine the legitimacy of an elected parliament was through the exceptional authority granted to it to examine the electoral appeals. This chapter first discusses the extent of the Court’s jurisdiction to examine electoral appeals and then its authority to annul an elected parliament. The Constitutional Court has a number of competences - its inherent competence being to examine the constitutionality of laws and decrees. The control of election laws and the electoral process also fall under its jurisdiction, as is the case in several other countries of the region, for example Egypt. Here it may be considered as a normal Court where the electoral cases are appealed; whether concerning the division of constitu-encies or the voting mechanism. In some instances, the same court hears electoral appeals in terms of election invalidity, whether in relation to invalid legal procedures that vitiated the electoral process, or in relation to the inspection of practices during the electoral process, or in relation to arithmetic errors and erroneous announcement of results. Thus, through this appeal function and “detour” in cases, wherein the Constitutional Court examined the former Royal Decrees regarding the electoral process,