Parliament to vote on a bill to question the constitutionality of legislation

A draft organic law on the conditions of putting forth the unconstitutionality of a law, under the provisions of Chapter 133 of the Constitution, is to be ratified by the House of Representatives of the Moroccan Parliament.

The bill will allow parts in a judicial case brought before the courts to argue that applying a law will result in an infringement, violation, or deprivation of one of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

The plea of unconstitutionality of law may be raised before the various courts of the Kingdom and directly before the Constitutional Court in connection with the adjudication of appeals relating to the election of deputies.

The parliamentary teams have submitted their amendments to this project to prepare for the draft’s ratification. A detailed examination of the law project was conducted under the Committee on Justice and Legislation framework last Tuesday, in the presence of Minister of Justice Abdel Latif Wahbi.

Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling in 2018 that several articles in the bill were unconstitutional, the government put forth this project. An updated version of the bill was sent back to the House of Representatives.

The Constitutional Court refused to grant the Court of Cassation the power to rule on the legislative nature of the legal requirements of a law that is to but put forth and determined as included in the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution or not, considering that this is an extension of the conditions that must be verified by the judge before whom the case is raised.

The Constitutional Court considered that the decision on the legislative nature of the relevant legal requirement and the determination of the list of rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution were among the competencies that the Constitutional Court exercises exclusively.

The new draft stipulated what conditions to consider to put forth an exception of unconstitutionality.

These conditions include paying a legal fee that a regulatory text will determine.

Determining the legislative requirement that is the subject of the payment and that the legislative requirement that is the subject of the payment is the one that has been applied or is intended to be applied.

The decision to conform to the Constitution’s legislative requirement should not have been made unless the bases on which the decision mentioned above has been built changed.

Reda Boukmazi, a lawyer who was a member of the Committee on Justice and Legislation of the House of Representatives in the previous legislature, stated to Hespress AR, that, “The previous draft had caused a wide discussion in the Committee on Justice and Legislation.”

“This is due to its stipulation that the defenses must be presented before the Court of Cassation that decides on the extent of its seriousness and decides to refer to the Constitutional Court or reject it, which the Constitutional Court opposed” He continued.

The lawyer added that “the new draft limited the intervention of the courts to ensure that the plea notes that the laws were unconstitutional to meet the formal requirements, and obliged the court to ask the one rising this question to correct the putting forth procedure within four days.”

The lawyer also told Hespress AR that “litigants can again raise the issue before a higher court when the case is referred to them” to comment on the problem posed by the immunization of court decisions against the appeal.

According Hassan Ahoyu, a legal expert “the possibility that the Constitutional Court does not accept it remains probable, considering its rigidity regarding the previous objection to the judicial liquidation system in its entirety and its defense of its sole right to examine the constitutionality of laws.”

Despite the changes in this bill, Ahoyu told Hespress AR that “the Constitutional Court may raise the difficulty of separating the verification of the requirement to change the bases on which the decision was taken from, in compliance with the legislative requirement subject to the Constitution, as a reason for accepting the case, from the scope of the constitutionality review.”