Sudanese Constitutional Court
The Constitutional Court is considered the highest judicial body specialised in constitutional adjudication in Sudan, and it is the institution charged with guarding the Constitution and ensuring the supremacy of its texts over laws and orders below it. Before its establishment, constitutional cases were heard before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court within the unified judiciary system influenced by the British system, until the Constitution of Sudan of 1998 established it for the first time as an independent and specialised constitutional court, then the Interim Constitution of 2005 provided for it, and the Constitutional Court Act of 1998 (Act No. 13) was issued to regulate its work. The 1998 Constitution, in Article (105/2), designated the Court as the "guardian of the Constitution", and granted it the jurisdiction to interpret constitutional and legal texts in matters referred to it by the President of the Republic, the National Assembly, half the governors of the states, or half the members of the Council of States, to hear claims by aggrieved persons to protect constitutional rights, freedoms and sanctities, and claims of conflict of jurisdiction between state organs, in addition to any other matters that the Constitution or the law decides fall within its jurisdiction. Article (34) also provided that every aggrieved person who has exhausted grievance and complaint procedures before the executive and administrative organs has the right to resort to the Constitutional Court, and that it may annul any law or order contrary to the Constitution and restore the right to the complainant or compensate him for his harm. A claim is brought before it directly by an original petition without passing through another court, which distinguishes the Sudanese experience in this regard. The 1998 Act, in Article (11/f), granted it the power to examine judicial procedures, orders and judgments to verify their soundness from a constitutional standpoint, a broad jurisdiction that raised legal debate about its role in reviewing the judgments of the Supreme Court itself. The first Constitutional Court worked in the period 1998–2005, and its judicial precedents established important procedural rules, including requiring a direct personal interest and actual harm for a constitutional claim to be accepted. (Historical structural overview — does not necessarily reflect the current situation in light of the circumstances of the war)
(Sources: Constitution of Sudan of 1998 — Articles 34 and 105; Constitutional Court Act of 1998 (No. 13); published legal studies on the Sudaress website — Dr. Awad Al-Hassan Al-Nour and lawyer Musab Awad Al-Karim)
— Editorial Team