English abstract
The research dealt with an important topic that stems from the real need for a judicial body concerned with monitoring the constitutionality of laws, decrees and procedures which have the power of law, similar to many countries that knew this type of control. In fact, the research is based on Article (85) of the Omani constitution issued in 2021, which established this oversight, and the Judicial Authority Act came to confirm this by assigning consideration of this matter to a committee concerned with settling disputes of jurisdiction, and contradiction of provisions stipulated in Article (10) of it. The research included three chapters, preceded by an introductory chapter, during which we studied the principle of separation of powers, its importance, and manifestations, and then the oversight over the constitutionality of laws in terms of definition and type, with a review of political oversight and its model, the French Constitutional Council, and judicial oversight, for example, the US Federal Court, and the Egyptian Constitutional Court, with assessing each of the two oversights. Moreover, the status of judicial oversight on the constitutionality of laws in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries was presented, which appeared to have known this type of oversight and set up constitutional courts in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the Federal Supreme Court in the Emirates, but none in Saudi Arabia. However, constitutional oversight in Oman is the bottom line of this research. The legal and parliamentary oversight on the validity of draft laws, decrees that have the power of law and draft treaties that the Sultanate wants to enter into, is currently carried out by the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs, as well as the Council of Oman with its Shura and State Councils. The research also reviewed the reality of judicial oversight under the current texts, and therefore it cannot be said that we have both types of oversight on the constitutionality of laws. Hence, the proposal offered by this research is the establishment of the Constitutional Court in implementation of Article (85) of the Basic Law, which is also the demand that the public seeks, provided that it is concerned with determining the extent to which laws are compatible with the Basic Law, to ensure that they do not contradict its provisions. In this regard, it is useful to learn from the comparative law, which applies oversight before the issuance of the legislation and after its implementation on the one hand, and direct oversight or by secondary appeal on the other hand, provided that individuals and public bodies should be allowed to take either path alike.
