Joseph Aoun’s formula had the merit of removing any ambiguity: if the ten members of the Supreme Judicial Council did not sign, judicial appointments should not even be sent to him. Nine out of ten signatures wouldn’t be enough. The President of the Republic, according to high-ranking judicial sources, refused to affix his own text to a division at the top of justice.
This demand came after particularly tense discussions between three of the country’s principal judicial officials: the President of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, Souheil Abboud, the Attorney General of the Court of Cassation, Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, and the President of the Judicial Inspectorate, Osama Mnaymneh. The differences concerned certain names, but also assignments and the exclusion of certain judges from posts envisaged.
Justice Minister Adel Nassar had to bring the three officials together in his office. This meeting helped to reduce disputes. The Council then met again and unanimously adopted the appointments of its ten members.
The final text represents thirteen pages, the last of which sets out its reasons. One source speaks of more than sixty judges concerned; Another estimates the number of names at approximately seventy. This difference must be kept: the available documents do not allow for a certain resolution. However, they converge on the essentials. The ten members of the Council finally signed and Adel Nassar signed the decree.
Behind these so-called « partial » appointments is therefore a much more significant sequence. The president refused to arbitrate the names, but imposed a political and institutional condition on the judiciary: to settle its own differences before asking it to sign.
Vacancy of posts turned into a conflict at the top of justice
Originally, the operation had to respond to a relatively classic problem: vacations had accumulated in several jurisdictions after the retirement of judges.
As a result, some assignments needed to be reorganized to ensure that courts, prosecutors ‘ offices and education services did not operate with long-term essential vacancies.
Administrative necessity was difficult to challenge. An unfilled position in a jurisdiction is not simply an empty box in an organizational chart. Depending on his function, he may slow down investigations, delay the processing of cases or increase the burden borne by the remaining judges.
It is precisely for this reason that the operation was described as partial. It was not intended to reconstruct the entire Lebanese judicial map. First, it had to fill vacancies and redistribute some judges in order to maintain continuity of service.
However, the preparation of the text quickly revealed differences.
Judicial sources describe lively discussions within the Higher Judicial Council. The disagreements reportedly covered several names and positions. Some magistrates were supported for assignment. Others were challenged. In some cases, the dispute would have concerned not only the appointment of one judge, but also the exclusion of another.
The latter is important.
A judicial appointment never reads only through the person who obtains the position. The one who does not obtain can be just as revealing of the balance of power.
Abboud, al-Hajj and Mnaymneh at the heart of the differences
Three officials appear at the centre of this sequence.
Souheil Abboud chairs the Higher Council of the Judiciary. Ahmad Rami al-Hajj holds the post of Attorney General at the Court of Cassation. Osama Mnaymneh leads the Judicial Inspectorate.
The differences between these three officials were therefore not related to peripheral issues. They appeared at the top of three core functions: judicial governance, prosecution and disciplinary oversight.
According to the information gathered, the discussions have intensified around certain assignments.
However, the available documents do not provide a sufficiently precise list of the judges challenged and the posts concerned to enable them to be appointed without extrapolation. We must therefore stop where the sources stop: disagreements on names, assignments and certain exclusions are documented; their complete individual detail is not.
This limit does not detract from the scope of the conflict.
Disagreement between Council members is normal. A disagreement strong enough to require a conciliation meeting with the Minister of Justice and to provoke a presidential intervention on the conditions of signature changes scale.
The risk was that the divergence in some assignments would become a lasting institutional division.
Adel Nassar brings together the three officials in his office
It was in this context that Justice Minister Adel Nassar spoke.
He summoned to his office Souheil Abboud, Ahmad Rami al-Hajj and Osama Mnaymneh.
The purpose of the meeting was not, according to the information available, to substitute the Minister for the Council in the choice of magistrates. The aim was to bring positions closer and address the causes of the conflict so that the Council could resume its work.
Distinction is essential.
The problem of judicial appointments in Lebanon is precisely their permanent exposure to suspicion of political intervention. Had the minister himself distributed the posts or imposed the names, the crisis exit mechanism would have aggravated the problem he claimed to solve.
On the contrary, the judicial sources describe the meeting as an operation designed to contain differences.
It would have placed the discussions within their institutional framework.
Judicial officials reportedly found that their differences over certain names did not justify a break in the Council itself. They shared a goal that was presented as superior: to preserve the judicial institution and prevent the battle over the posts from exposing it to political intervention.
It was at this point that Joseph Aoun’s intervention gained full weight.
» Do not send them to me » : the line fixed by Aoun
According to a high-ranking judicial source, Joseph Aoun conveyed a particularly clear position to the officials concerned.
He would not sign appointments if they were not approved by the ten members of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary.
Even nine signatures wouldn’t be enough.
The sentence attributed to him sums up his approach: if the ten judges do not sign, they do not pass the text on to him as he will not sign it. The members of the Council were to first agree with each other and then send him the appointments.
This requirement deserves to be considered in all its institutional ambiguity.
On the one hand, the President uses his signing authority to impose a condition on the process. It therefore does not remain totally outside the crisis.
On the other hand, the same sources claim that he refused to use this position to impose a particular magistrate.
Joseph Aoun would not have proposed any names.
He would not have requested the appointment of any judge.
Nor would he have requested the exclusion of a magistrate.
The choice of persons and the distribution of posts would have remained the responsibility of the Council.
His intervention would therefore have concerned the method rather than the content: it required a text unanimously accepted by the judicial authority which prepared it.
Why require ten signatures when nine could have existed?
This is probably the most interesting question in the whole sequence.
If nine out of ten members were willing to sign, why demand unanimity?
The implicit answer is in context.
A list adopted against one of the main judicial officials reportedly settled the posts but left the conflict intact. It could have been interpreted as the victory of one judicial camp over another.
The dissenting judge then continued to perform his duties within the same system.
The problem would therefore have been moved, unresolved.
By demanding the ten signatures, Aoun placed the cost of the disagreement on the members of the Council themselves. No camp could hope to circumvent the other by simply obtaining a sufficient majority and then transferring political responsibility to the president.
The message was, in essence, that the Presidency will not transform a judicial division into presidential arbitration.
This method also prevented each party from using Baabda to impose its preferences.
A magistrate could no longer rely on a presidential intervention against his colleagues. We had to go back to the table and negotiate.
Unanimity obtained after the conflict, not prior facade unanimity
After the meeting at the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Council of the Judiciary resumed its consideration of the case.
The names and positions were discussed again.
This time, the process was successful.
The ten members signed.
This detail is central because it makes it clear that the final unanimity does not erase the differences which preceded it. Rather, it means that a compromise was reached after the conflict reached a sufficiently high level to require two interventions outside the internal debate: that of the Minister of Justice to bring the positions closer together and that of the President of the Republic to set the conditions he would agree to sign.
The decree then continued its institutional path.
Adel Nassar signed it.
Information indicates that it has thirteen pages and that the last page is devoted to the reasons for the appointments.
The number of judges varies slightly according to the information published. One source refers to more than sixty judges. Another speaks about seventy names.
This discrepancy is not anomalous, but it does not alter the scope of the operation: several dozen judges change their positions or occupy positions that were to be filled.
Behind the names, continuity of the courts
The importance of this operation should not be reduced to the balance of power between judicial officials.
Vacancy had implications for the day-to-day functioning of justice.
The appointments concern courts, prosecutors’ offices and investigation services.
These are precisely the structures where a lack of judges can produce a chain effect.
An inadequately provided public prosecutor’s office accumulates cases. A slow training service extends the procedures. Courts facing vacancies must allocate the burden among the judges present.
The problem takes on an even greater dimension in a country where judicial slowness is already fuelling criticism.
The prison record offers a spectacular illustration. Political leaders are currently referring to approximately 8,600 detainees in Lebanese prisons, of which almost 80 per cent are persons in pretrial detention.
These figures cannot be attributed exclusively to vacancies in judicial posts. The causes of prison overcrowding are much more numerous.
However, they show why the ability of the courts to function regularly is not a secondary administrative problem.
A justice that lacks magistrates necessarily ends up keeping the litigants waiting.
The episode also raises the question of judicial independence
The outcome can be read in two ways.
The first highlights the presidential refusal to intervene in names. According to this reading, Joseph Aoun protected the Higher Council of the Judiciary by returning responsibility for his own choices. He allegedly refused to become the arbitrator of individual careers and demanded that the magistrates themselves produce a compromise.
The second reading may question the fact that a president sets a unanimous requirement for the judicial authority to announce that he will not sign without the ten signatures.
The boundary between institutional guarantee and influence is therefore fine.
However, the available information makes it possible to distinguish clearly what is documented from what is not.
It is documented by judicial sources that the President demanded unanimity.
It is also reported that he did not propose or exclude any name.
On the other hand, there is no evidence in the documents consulted that he secretly negotiated individual assignments.
This distinction is fundamental in a case where rumours can quickly turn a procedural intervention into a charge of interference.
A compromise that avoids a fracture, without removing future disagreements
The final result is institutionally important: appointments were approved by the ten members.
But the episode leaves several questions open.
The first concerns the criteria used to divide judges when several candidates covet the same position.
The second concerns mechanisms to prevent personal or institutional differences between senior judicial officials from paralyzing assignments again.
The third concerns transparency. The sources explain that there has been disagreement over names and exclusions, but the precise reasons for these differences are not publicly disclosed in their entirety.
However, independent justice does not depend solely on the absence of political intervention.
It also depends on the capacity of the judiciary to explain its own career decisions according to understandable criteria.
That is where unanimity is not enough.
Ten signatures guarantee that no Council member has formally refused the final text. They do not say, on their own, why such a magistrate was chosen and another dismissed.
Previous Aoun might affect future appointments
The method used finally creates a political precedent.
Joseph Aoun sent a message that goes beyond this list of dozens of magistrates: when a judicial appointment arrives divided in Baabda, he does not want to become the one who divides between the camps.
If this doctrine is maintained, it amends the calculation of the members of the Higher Council of the Judiciary in the coming deadlines.
They now know that a majority of nine against one may not be politically sufficient to obtain the presidential signature.
They also know, according to the information available, that they cannot rely on Baabda to impose a name that the Council would not have managed to get accepted within it.
This method can lead to compromise.
It can also make unanimity more difficult to reach when a deeper dispute arises.
This time, the bet worked. A meeting at the Department of Justice contained the differences. Souheil Abboud, Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, Osama Mnaymneh and the other members of the Council eventually converged. The ten signatures were obtained. Adel Nassar signed the decree. Dozens of vacancies or reassignment needs can now be addressed.
But the real information is perhaps less in the sixty to seventy names than in the method that allowed them to pass. Faced with a divided Supreme Council of the Judiciary, Joseph Aoun did not choose the winners. He refused to sign until the ten judges were able to produce a single list themselves. For an institution regularly accused of undergoing political power arbitration, this requirement transforms the conflict: this time, justice was ordered to settle first its disagreement internally before asking the policy to endorse its choice.
