Constitutional Council (Arab Union)

The Constitutional Council (Arabic: المجلس الدستوري al-majlis ad-dustūrī) was a body formed by the Supreme Court of the Arab Union from September 1999 to April 2000, which was responsible for directing and overseeing the ratification of the new Constitution of the Arab Union at all levels of government throughout the union and its 20 republics. Its main pragmatic task was restructuring government according to a federal plan by assigning agencies each to a specific level of government (federal, republican, governorate, district or municipal); many such agencies or areas of jurisdiction were formerly split between two or more de facto levels of government (the Arab Union was de jure a unitary state under the previous constitution of 1958, which by the 1990s practiced devolution in the great majority of areas of jurisdiction of public administration).

The Constitutional Council was abolished upon the official completion of the new constitution's ratification and the accompanying governmental and administrative restructuring. According to line 5, part 6, article 19 of the Constitution of the Arab Union, the Supreme Court retains the power to establish a new Constitutional Council in the event of the passing of a novel constitution or of an amendment to the current constitution, which answers to the President of the Arab Union during the execution of its responsibilities and only to the Supreme Court in matters of organisation.

The Constitutional Council is not to be confused with a Constitutional Committee, which is the name used by the former body responsible to the Arab Congress which drafted the current constitution.