Chancellor Abdel Wahab Abdel Razek was appointed as the new chief of the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) on Sunday after holding a general assembly to select an alternative for Adly Mansour, who has reached the retirement age limit.
The SCC is the highest ranking judicial court in Egypt. The new chief selection is supposed to become effective on 4 June, which is within a few days.
The assembly selected Abdel Razek based on the 2014 Constitution Article 193. The article states that the assembly should select the SCC chief from among three of the oldest deputies, and the selection decision should be ratified by the presidency.
Abdel Razek joined the SCC in 2011 as a deputy for the chief. Earlier, he held several high-ranking judicial positions. Between 1992 and 1998 he used to work as a legal consultant for the Kuwaiti cabinet.
Following the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in 2013, Mansour was selected as an interim president. During his ruling period, a plethora of laws were ratified by the interim president, and some of them are widely believed to be unconstitutional.
In November 2013, Mansour issued the controversial Protest Law, which conflicts with Article 73 of the 2014 Constitution that allows for peaceful assemblies without prior security notification or monitoring.
The law, however, was issued at a time of regularly occurring deadly clashes between Security Forces and Brotherhood supporters in a bid to regulate protesting. However, it was used later to build several cases against many other dissents who currently serve prison terms on charges of illegal protesting.
