The following is a guest post by George Sadek, a Senior Legal Analyst at the Law Library of Congress. George has previously written posts on Egypt’s constitutional referendum, elections in Saudi Arabia, and the trial of Seif al Islam al Gaddafi in Libya.
The development and adoption of a new Egyptian Constitution has received a lot of attention in the news in recent months. Having moved to the U.S. from Egypt in 1999, and having subsequently conducted research work relating to the laws of the Middle East in various academic and governmental institutions, I have been following the legal developments in the Arabic speaking countries very closely. I thought it would be useful to pull together some information about the drafting process and the content of the Egyptian Constitution of 2012 for In Custodia Legis readers. In a second post, to be published next week, I will cover various perspectives on the constitution–including those in support of it and those that criticize it.
On March 26, 2012, in accordance with article 60 of the Constitutional Declaration of March 2011, a Constituent Assembly was established