Workshop for the Constitutional Panel of the Supreme Court of South Sudan

Foundation conducts workshop to assist drafting process of Rules of Procedure for the Constitutional Panel of the Supreme Court of South Sudan

The Max Planck Foundation, in close cooperation with the Supreme Court of South Sudan, conducted a workshop in Juba from 23–25 February 2016 focusing on assisting the Supreme Court in drafting the Rules of Procedure for its Constitutional Panel according to Article 126(3) and (6) of the Transitional Constitution of South Sudan, 2011.

In the course of the workshop, the Research Fellows followed up on the December 2015 workshop, entitled “Rules of Procedure,” as well as the intensive consultations with the Justices of the Supreme Court in the weeks prior to the workshop. The Research Fellows presented procedural solutions for the Constitutional Panel that were discussed and agreed upon by the Justices and introduced selected procedural topics that hereto remained either contentious or unaddressed. The objective was to find agreement on crucial procedural matters and thereby facilitate the drafting process of the Rules of Procedure of the Constitutional Panel, in particular by offering the Justices an interactive forum for discussion and by providing them with comparative studies on similar rules of African and European apex courts. The Rules of Procedure for the Constitutional Panel of the Supreme Court, once adopted, will contribute to the realisation of the principles of constitutionalism, rule of law, and good governance in South Sudan.

The workshop was inaugurated by the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to South Sudan, His Excellency Mr. Johannes Lehne, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Sudan, Justice Chan Reec Madut, and a representative of the Max Planck Foundation. Following this workshop, the Foundation envisages further consultations and a final workshop on the topic of “Rules of Procedure” with the Justices of the Supreme Court in order to conclude the drafting process by the end of June 2016.

This workshop falls within the second of two components of the programme for “Technical Support to the Supreme Court of South Sudan”, which is funded by the German Foreign Office and implemented by the Max Planck Foundation.