Within its efforts to develop the judicial system, the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) has created new departments specialised in both the Court of Cassation and the Court of Appeal, as well as two appeal-hearing chambers, a new chamber for hearing implementation disputes, and a specialised department for reviewing pretrial appeals.
The new formations included many new elements in a way that reflects the council’s efforts in developing the judicial system and achieving full justice in line with developments that the country is witnessing in all fields, as in addition to the usual departments such as the department of Hadd and Qisas, as well as Criminal, Civil, Administrative, Labour, Formations and Family Departments, the formations also included new departments specialised in numerous judicial fields.
The decision of SJC included the creation of a new criminal department in the Court of Cassation, in addition to the current one. Despite the great leap made by the Court of Cassation this year in completing the cases before it, the need for work requires more achievement in the field of criminal discrimination. The evening period has been allocated to review the pending cases of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Court of Appeal and the Court of First Instance, while the SJC approved the new formations of chambers in the Court of Cassation, the Court of Appeal, and the Court of First Instance.
It is worth mentioning that the Court of Cassation has not stopped its service during the suspension of sessions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which contributed to an unprecedented achievement of the court, as only a small number of unforeseen appeals remained for one or two more sessions. In light of the great success achieved by the Criminal Council Chamber that was created in the last amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code issued under Law No 23 of 2004, it was decided to continue the chamber’s work in two chambers, and it is hoped that this will make a qualitative leap in the consideration of criminal appeals and the speed of adjudication in them.
The decision to create a specialised department to look into the appeals of execution disputes aims at what enforcement disputes require in terms of speedy adjudication in the consideration of appeals filed against them. The chamber will hold two sessions per week at its headquarters at the Court of Appeal in Lusail. In this context, the council affirmed the necessity for the implementation department to take the necessary measure not to seize funds that exceed the amount required by the executor against them.
In light of the results achieved from the work of the evening courts, the council decided to continue working with them, as several evening chambers have been established in the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal, and the evening chambers are expected to complete all the cases that have been delayed due to the pandemic circumstances.
Family documentation was also strengthened with an additional number of judges, as the number of judges was increased to meet the increasing demands on documentation procedures, in addition to developing and updating the work system by relying more on electronic systems, which contributes to completing transactions and speeding up procedures.
The launching of the first phase of the implementation programme is where cases are recorded electronically to facilitate the public in litigation procedures. Supreme Judicial Council indicated that the execution judge is exclusively competent to adjudicate all substantive and temporary execution disputes, whatever they are, and to issue decisions and orders related to execution, as well as decide on temporary execution disputes as a judge of urgent matters.
In the context of implementing the rulings as well, the Supreme Judicial Council instructed not to withhold funds that exceed the amounts required to implement judgments, in co-ordination with the concerned authorities to achieve this, so that seizure is only made on the amount required to implement judgments.