Workshop for Judges of the Court of Cassation and Ordinary Courts in Jordan on Judicial Interpretation and Application of Fundamental Rights
On 5-6 October 2019, the Max Planck Foundation delivered a workshop on “Judicial Interpretation and Application of Fundamental Rights” with judges of the Court of Cassation and the Administrative, Appeals, Military and Shari’a Courts in Jordan. This workshop was the last in the series of activities for these Courts in the current project, and was formally inaugurated by Judge Ali al-Hjeileh (President of the High Administrative Court), Judge Fu’ad al-Daradkeh (Vice-President of the Court of Cassation) and the Country Manager for Jordan from the Foundation.
The workshop was led by two Research Fellows from the Foundation and presentations from Judge Ali al-Hjeileh on ‘Ordinary Courts and the Constitutional Question’ and from Judge Fu’ad al-Daradkeh on ‘Judicial Restraints in Comparative Jurisprudence’ were also heard. The technical content of the workshop delivered by Foundation experts focused on the modes and methods of interpretation practiced in applying principles of constitutional law, human rights and the rule of law with a focus on comparative jurisprudence in Egypt, Italy, Spain, Mexico and the Netherlands.
In addition to technical presentations outlining the core principles and comparative practices, Foundation experts provided six interpretative decisions to judges of the various Jordanian Courts and invited them to analyse the reasoning and modes of interpretation applied in each decision, and to critically assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. The exercise led to an interesting exchange of views amongst judges comparing their own practices in court on a daily basis and some of the innovative methods applied by judges in the simulation exercise.
The workshops with Judges of the Court of Cassation and Ordinary Courts is one component of the Foundation’s project on ‘Raising Technical Capacity and Technical Knowledge of Judges of the Constitutional Court (Jordan and Palestine) and Judges of Ordinary Courts in Jordan (2017-2019)‘. The Project is generously supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.