October 14, 2026
The recent decision issued by the Lebanese Constitutional Council sparked a wide legal debate, which addressed the limits of the council’s powers to monitor the constitutionality of laws, and the dividing line between invalidating texts that violate the constitution, or interpreting them in a binding manner that may affect their content.
In this context, former MP Hadi Hobeish expressed his respect and appreciation for the President of the Constitutional Council and its members, but he explicitly declared his disagreement with the aforementioned decision. He explained that the Lebanese Constitution, in addition to the law establishing the Constitutional Council and its internal regulations, limits the Council’s powers to monitoring the constitutionality of laws by nullifying articles that violate the Constitution, in whole or in part.
Hobeish stressed that the authority to “mandatory interpretation of laws” was assigned exclusively to the Parliament in accordance with the provisions of the Taif Constitution, considering that resorting to French jurisprudence, which grants the constitutional councils there the authority to interpret, does not justify expanding the powers of the Constitutional Council in Lebanon to include the tasks of Parliament.
He pointed out that even if we implicitly acknowledge the right of the Constitutional Council to use the technique of “interpretive reservations” to bring texts into line with the Constitution, this does not give it the right to amend legal texts, or abolish provisions and crimes stipulated by law.
Hobeish concluded by stressing that confronting texts that violate the constitution requires partial repeal and not just interpreting them, considering that the decision relied on “interpretive reservations” to make fundamental amendments to the articles of the law, independently of the constitutional mechanism represented by partial repeal.
