Le droit judiciaire saoudien à l’épreuve de la réforme judiciaire de 2007 : nouveauté ou continuité ?

Abstract

The development of the Saudi judicial law has passed into various steps through the history of the Arabian Peninsula. Successive laws have been enacted after the reunification of the kingdom, and they have set up a simple organization of courts deprived of their competences because of the proliferation of committees with jurisdictional authority. The old legal codifications had already recognized judicial duality (judicial courts and administrative courts), but the fields were not clearly separated since administrative courts could for example hear both criminal and commercial cases. The openness of the kingdom towards the world, and the evolution of the Saudi society were the seeds of the 2007 reform for the establishment of a modern judicial system. This reform has paved the way for specialized courts, the establishment of professional judges and the affirmation of the principle of double jurisdiction.