Legal Affairs Committee
New economy requires new judiciary
The Legal Affairs Committee met on March 24 to discuss “The proposed economic courts,” with guest speaker Hisham Ragab, deputy minister for legal and legislative affairs at the Ministry of Trade & Industry. The presentation focused on the principal role of the economic courts, as well as the difference between the economic courts and existing commercial judicial circuits.
Ragab began by giving a brief overview of the proposed law for the establishment of economic courts in Egypt, noting that the legislation comes in response to today’s market challenges. As a market economy began prevailing worldwide, many people presumed this would result in deregulation and thereby diminish the role of the government. This presupposition, however, was challenged by new ideas, new market patterns and new agreements, which affected the economic legislative framework and led to the continuous promulgation of new laws. These new laws and new economic decisions led to structural changes that have made laws instituted decades ago no longer applicable or relevant.
Due to the substantial amount of new legislation, one cannot depend on judges, regardless of their capabilities, who have not had the opportunity to study these laws or who are not aware of new regulations or agreements that can affect cases. For this reason, Ragab explained, a ruling usually takes a long time in order for judges to comprehensively assess and evaluate each case. It is imperative to assign judges to cases where they are familiar with the general social, economic and political circumstances pertinent to the case, he added.
The law for the proposed economic courts is based on three general characteristics. The first is specialization; the judges presiding over cases will be specialized in the field of economic law. Secondly, there will be a mechanism for case management in the form of a special committee for each economic court that will be responsible for preparing cases. Thirdly, the courts will consult experts and involve them in order to help in the process of resolving and adjudicating cases.
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