Court clarifies CJ's advisory on Parliament's dissolution

Kenya’s MPs have repeatedly failed to pass a law on gender representation in Parliament, as the Constitution requires them to do. Now, a significant new constitutional judgment by Kenya’s High Court has ratcheted up the cost of failing to comply. The court clarified the process the Chief Justice must follow to take a dramatic, but constitutionally-mandated, corrective step: if MPs won’t pass the required law, the CJ is obliged to ‘advise’ the President to dissolve Parliament. In 2020, former CJ David Maraga purported to do just this, but the court has now found he left out a step in the process, and set his ‘advisory’ aside. As Carmel Rickard explains though, the court said the way is still open for his successor to issue a new advisory as long as the current CJ first makes sure to comply with the missing step. Read more in A Matter of Justice on the Legalbrief site.

Kenya judgment

A Matter of Justice