Dr. Ahmad Hosni Ashkar
Assistant Professor of Public Law, Head of the Department of Legal Sciences,
College of Graduate Studies, Arab American University, Jenine, Palestine

Abstract:

In this research, the researcher studies the legislative framework of most constitutional censorship systems in Arab countries, and the jurisprudence of the Arab constitutional judiciary considering the Arab region is a legislative bloc similar in structure and origin. The problem of the research lies in the fact that the retroactive effect of constitutional provisions leads to the cancellation of all effects that the legislative text has arranged since its issuance. On the other hand, implementing the immediate effect of a ruling of unconstitutionality leads to a bias towards legal security at the expense of the principle of legality, while implementing the rule of retroactive effect gives priority to the principle of legality at the expense of legal security, and what may be added to that is the relative validity of the ruling in the event The constitutional judge decided to reverse a constitutional ruling whose subject matter had previously been decided.
In this paper, the researcher aimed to clarify the authority of constitutional provisions in Arab constitutional censorship systems and their scope, and to explain the position of Arab legislation on them, and how the constitutional judiciary addresses issues related to the authority of its rulings, through the analytical and comparative approaches. The researcher presented the main topics of research in two main sections. The first: deals with the scope of the validity of constitutional provisions, and the position of Arab legislation on them, by studying the scope of the validity of constitutional provisions from the developer of jurisprudence, and the position of Arab legislation on the validity of constitutional provisions, while the second section dealt with the validity of constitutional provisions from the perspective of the constitutional judiciary, especially the relative validity of the constitutional ruling, and the temporal validity of the enforcement of the constitutional ruling.
The researcher reached several results, the most prominent of which is that the constitutional censorship system that is best and most capable of achieving relative stability of legal relations, and achieving a balance between the principle of legality, protecting acquired rights, and enhancing legal security, is the constitutional censorship system that is based on stipulating – explicitly – the order of immediate effect of the constitutional ruling, while granting the constitutional censorship body the power to set another date for the ruling to become effective. The research also recommended introducing legislative amendments to many constitutional censorship systems to resolve the problems resulting from the shortcomings of this legislation.

Keywords: legal security, temporal effect, relative authority, retroactive effect, and Constitutional Court.

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