Federal High Court in Iraq

After the changes in the political area in Iraq in the year of 2003, Federal high court has been established and centralized control model has been adopted. A constitutional court has been established under the name of Federal high court with the law numbered (30) in 2005 with respect to Iraqi State management law for the transitional phase which was issued by the international coalition provisional authority in 2004 based on the statutory power in the decision numbered (1483) of security council. After the duty of international coalition provisional authority was finished, constitution of Iraq which is still in force was issued in 2005 and a constitutional judicial system which adopts a centralized control model for constitutionality of the laws has been adopted. A constitutional court was decided to be established under the name of Federal high court, a law which was issued with the approval of two thirds majority of the parliamentary assembly both regulate the court procedures and number of the judiciaries, experts in Islamic jurisprudence, and legal scholars that constitute the structure of the court. Duties and authorities of the court are dived into two parts: These are: Constitutional authority to oversee the constitutionality of the laws and regulations in effect and interpret the provisions of the constitution; the other one is the juridical power for settling matters that arise from the application of the Federal laws, decisions, regulations, instructions and procedures issued by the Federal authority, Settling disputes that arise between the Federal government and the governments of the regions and governorates, municipalities, and local administrations, settling accusations directed against the President, the Prime Minister and the Ministers, ratifying the final results of the parliamentary election and settling competency disputes between the Federal judiciary and the judicial institutions of the regions and governorates. This study was made about the Federal high court. I divided the study into four sections; the first section includes how the description of constitutional jurisdiction emerged, the legal foundation and the model that the countries apply for these jurisdictional transactions. In the second section which is about the organization of Federal high court in Iraq and the members, we studied the old Iraq constitutions and constitutional court experiences as a summary. Our aim is to explain the main frame of constitutional jurisdiction in Iraq. In this section, judiciaries, experts in Islamic jurisprudence, and legal scholars that constitute the structure of the court were inspected. The number of the court members will be determined with the court law which will be issued in the afterwards. We explained the law has not been issued yet and the court acts according to the previous law which was issued before the constitution was accepted with the reasons. In the third section, we examined the duties and the authorities of the Federal high court which was stated in the (93) provision of the constitution. We determined that the court acts in accordance with the constitution, court law and internal regulations that were issued by the court in 2005. In the fourth section, we examined the provisions and the decisions that the court made and we analyzed that the decisions are binding for all the authorities. We already indicated to what extent the laws that were issued by the court have a legal basis. We examined the legal effects before the court decision is made. Later, we formed our notes and the results related to organization of the court, its duties, arranging the relevant transactions and applying the decisions. We gave our advice for the deficiencies that arise while the court is giving decisions and compensation of their mistakes. The most significant ones; enacting the law related to the organization of the court and determining the duties immediately and reviewing some of the duties and authorities which include normal and administrative jurisdictions that are not appropriate for a constitutional court which preserves the constitution and makes centralized control.