After announcing a broad initiative of legal reform two years ago, Saudi Arabia now says it plans to establish new commercial courts in each of its 13 provinces next year as part of a $2.2bn drive.
An announcement last week that verdicts will be published on the justice ministry’s website suggests that the new courts will be more than window-dressing, and that an absence of sorely needed consistency has been recognised.
The Saudi capital markets authority has already begun publishing the names of insider trading and share manipulation offenders.
But, unlike other countries in the region, Saudi judges try to apply Islamic texts directly, rather than using them as a source of law. They specifically reject any system of precedent, as in common law systems, out of a fear that they may be “misled” by human wisdom. And no comprehensive civil code has been adopted, though such systems, often derived from French models, are common in the Arab world.
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