Egypt’s Judges Step Forward: The Judicial Election Boycott and Egyptian Reform

In a startling development this month, the Egyptian Judges Club decided to boycott their constitutionally mandated role of supervising upcoming elections. Is the Egyptian judiciary on a quest to transform Mubarak’s regime? In a new Carnegie Endowment Policy Outlook, Arab constitutionalism expert Nathan Brown and Egyptian Judge Hesham Nasr argue that rather than a bold move toward regime change, this is a calibrated confrontation with narrower aims: to secure judicial reform and support electoral reform. Brown and Nasr predict that the likely outcome of this standoff will be a series of regime concessions that, while limited, may nonetheless have significant long-term effects on opening a closed political system.

Click on link above for the full text of this Policy Outlook.

About the Author
Nathan J. Brown is a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is an expert on Arab constitutionalism and has written several books on Arab politics.