Mixed Courts of Egypt

The Joint courts in Egypt were dishes in Egypt during the British rule and the subsequent period of the Kingdom of Egypt, which were mainly the hearing of civil and commercial law disputes between locals and foreigners and between foreigners of different nationalities. A planned competence in the field of criminal law, however, was not implemented in practice. The two- instances courts were filled with both foreign as well as with local judges. They had their headquarters in Alexandria, Cairo and Al- Mansura, and existed from 1876 to 1949.

History

The Joint courts created at a time when Egypt was heavily in debt by the construction of the Suez Canal and in fact the government debt management under stood, which was conducted by the British Consul General. The creation of the Mixed Courts resulted from a privileged position of foreigners in Egypt, which went back to a series of agreements between the Ottoman Empire and various European countries. These so-called capitulations of the Ottoman Empire trade agreements had an almost complete immunity from the Egyptian judiciary to result, among other things for foreigners. However, a serious consequence of these contracts were large uncertainties in cases of dispute between natives and foreigners, as a result of suit and counter suit virtually every affected case had to be fought in several different legal systems. This caused high costs for operators and also contradicted the legal principle actor sequitur forum rei ( " The plaintiff must follow the jurisdiction of the defendant ").

Therefore, in 1867 it came at the behest of the Egyptian Foreign Minister and later Prime Minister Nubar Pasha to negotiations between the Egyptian government and the countries Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal and Russia. This led in 1875 to the signing of the Charter of the Mixed Tribunals ( Règlement d' organization judiciaire ) which thereupon took up on 1 February of the following year their work. This meant the widespread abolition of the special legal status of foreigners in Egypt in favor of a consistent jurisprudence. As inventory duration of the Mixed Tribunals an initial period of five years was set. This agreement was extended for a further five years until 1921 after further negotiations an indefinite period has been agreed.

International attention in the years 1933 to 1935 proceedings before the Joint courts Jabès case against van Meeteren and Safarowsky. Then the setting of the Mixed Courts of Justice on October 24, 1949, decided by the Treaty of Montreux in 1937 closed the abolition of the contractually specified privileges for foreigners in Egypt. The distance of the corresponding lettering on court palace in Cairo and the handover of the building to the national judiciary became a symbolic event with nationwide attention since the end of the Mixed Courts was seen as an important step to achieving full sovereignty of the country.

Jurisdiction

The jurisdiction of the Mixed Tribunals included in the field of civil and commercial law, all cases on the territory of Egypt, where as litigants locals and foreigners or foreigners of different nationalities were involved. Exceptions were the family law as well as questions of nationality. The planned competence in the field of criminal law, however, was not implemented, so that in this region even after the creation of the Mixed Tribunals continue to so-called consular courts of the respective countries of origin were responsible.

Foreigners from countries that were not party to the Charter, had the right to have their cases negotiate of the Joint courts. The judge extended beyond their jurisdiction to cases going from where they saw only foreign interests affected, even if the parties involved were exclusively Egyptian citizens or companies. Furthermore, foreigners were uninvolved partly used as a straw man to make cases to the Joint courts negotiate.

Legal bases

As a general legal sources of the Mixed Tribunals whose charter defined the natural law (French droit naturel ) and the so-called equity (French Equité ), ie the assessment of a case in accordance with the natural sense of justice. This was particularly true for cases that were not only recognized by written law or insufficient or where the existing law was not clearly applicable. Also in the context of the revision of the Charter in 1937, which took place in preparation for the setting of the Mixed Tribunals and strengthened among others, the position of the Egyptian judges, these two principles have been retained as the main sources of law for such situations. In practice, based formal rules that were created for the work of the Mixed Tribunals, especially on an adaptation of Roman law based on the French legal traditions to the conditions in Egypt.

Appropriate law books were created in the areas of civil law, civil litigation, commercial law, maritime law, criminal law and criminal procedure. Due to the shortness of time in which they were created, it was streamlined summaries of established European legal norms, which also came in significantly lower number of articles compared to the corresponding French or Italian laws expressed. For this reason, natural law considerations and the principle of fairness in the decisions of the Mixed Courts had a greater significance than in other jurisdictions. Such emphasis on these two principles as formal basis of the case law and as the sole basis for decisions in specific cases, is considered unique in the modern legal history.

Organization and functioning of

The first instance of the Mixed Courts were three designated Tribunal Mixte as courts in Alexandria, Cairo and Al- Mansura, the Cour d' Appel Mixte -called Court of Appeal had its headquarters in Alexandria. The total number of judges on all four courts was initially 32 and later rose to around 70 in the 1930s. Two -thirds were foreign lawyers, one-third local judge. They were appointed for life by the Egyptian government on the basis of nominations by the respective foreign powers. Their term of office was limited only by the existing to 1921 five-year time limit on the courts.

While the share of foreign judges was set to the total number contracted by the Charter, there were no specific regulations regarding the distribution to the individual countries. In practice, however, each of the Contracting States was represented at each of the three courts of first instance with at least one judge. The actual occupation and distribution has been negotiated by the respective countries through diplomatic channels. This part also lawyers from countries were appointed who were not party to the Charter. The sole official language for all negotiations, decisions and other documents was French. The official costume of the judges, however, corresponded to their respective countries of origin.