Previous articles in this series mentioned that the Constitutional Court issued the first issue of its magazine at the end of last year, which it dedicated to the rulings and decisions that have been issued since its establishment until the end of the year 2024; the rulings are those issued by the court when performing its role in monitoring the constitutionality of laws and regulations, and the decisions are those issued when performing its other role, which is the interpretation of constitutional texts.
This issue of the magazine indicates that the Constitutional Court issued (11) interpretative decisions in 2013; returning to the magazine pages reveals that it lacks the interpretation decision number (4) for the year 2013; pages (521- 523) were dedicated to interpretation decision number (3) for the year 2013, followed directly by interpretation decision number (5) for the year 2013.
The magazine pages also show a lack of the interpretation decision number (9) for the year 2013; pages (544- 548) were dedicated to interpretation decision number (8) for the year 2013, followed directly by interpretation decision number (10) for the year 2013.
The court documents also do not include the two referred-to interpretation decisions; according to the statistics of interpretative decisions, the number of interpretative decisions issued in 2013 was (9) decisions and not (11) decisions.
Furthermore, the constitutional principles derived by the Constitutional Court's technical office from the interpretative decisions lack a principle bearing number (4) for the year 2013 or number (9) for the year 2013.
Returning to the archive of the Official Gazette shows it lacks the interpretative decisions bearing the numbers (4) or (9) for the year 2013, meaning that the court did not issue decisions bearing those numbers (Article 59 of the Constitution).
The instructions on the procedures for deciding on appeals and requests for interpretation issued by the General Assembly of the Constitutional Court require the registration of requests for interpretation "upon receipt" in the designated register and giving them sequential numbers with confirmation of the date of receipt of the request for interpretation, the name of the requesting entity, and a summary of the subject of the request and a summary of the interpretation decision when issued (see items 3, 2 of the referred-to instructions).
But what is the reason for the mismatch between the numbers of interpretative decisions and their count?
The court previously rectified a material error; when it issued its first ruling with number (4) for the year 2013, the court included a note in the following ruling stating: "Ruling number (1) is the ruling that was issued by error with number (4) in the challenge to the Landlords and Tenants Law", so can it be said there was also a material error regarding the numbers of the interpretative decisions?
It is difficult to claim a material error exists regarding the interpretative decisions numbers (4, 9); especially since the court did not include a note as it did regarding the mentioned ruling, and it can be said that the reason for the mismatch between the numbers of the interpretative decisions and their count is likely because the requesting entity withdrew its request before the court could consider it; says our professor Dr. Kamel Al-Said, after presenting the issue of the right to withdraw a request for interpretation: "On this occasion, we regretfully record that the Constitutional Court did not enter in the minutes of its sessions the withdrawals of requests for interpretation, seeking the law of civil procedures, ..., and this happened on two occasions:
First, a request for the interpretation of the text of Article ... was withdrawn by the Speaker of the House of Representatives with his letter number ... dated 7/ 4/ 2013. Second, the Council of Ministers withdrew a request for the interpretation of the extent to which the provisions of Article (117) of the Constitution ... apply, noting that the request for interpretation was made by the Prime Minister's letter ... dated 12/ 9/ 2013. It is assumed in all of the above that the Constitutional Court would have entered these two withdrawals in its records based on a decision taken by the General Assembly" (General Theory of Constitutional Judiciary, 2017, p. 251).
Therefore; to ensure this issue does not repeat, it may be appropriate to amend the instructions for procedures on deciding appeals and requests for interpretation referred to by giving a sequential number to a request for interpretation; if an interpretation decision is issued, it should be issued with a number that considers the sequence of previous interpretative decisions, and it may also be appropriate to include the reason for not issuing an interpretation decision in the record of requests for interpretation, such as withdrawing the request by the entity that submitted it; to automate all requests for interpretation received by the court, and to enrich the legal library by enabling researchers to study those requests.
