New Law on Legal Profession: A Bitter Victory
On August 20, 2026, the long-anticipated regulation of the legal profession was officially published in the official journal, marking the conclusion of one of the most tumultuous battles in the justice sector in recent years. This law has now come into effect after months of protests, strikes, and intense negotiations, ultimately leading to a situation where the Constitutional Court faced challenges in addressing the referral made by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
However, the catastrophe left in the wake of this conflict, in my view, is not merely the passage of such a significant law without the necessary consensus and involvement it deserved. While the new law governing the legal profession is not entirely detrimental, and despite valid concerns raised by lawyers regarding certain provisions, it remains a law that can be amended in the future. Political majorities may shift, power dynamics may change, and a new government could reopen discussions and modify its aspects as needed.
The real tragedy lies in the price we all paid during this final phase of what can only be described as a brutal clash. This price encroached upon the constitutional realm, which should remain untouched by petty political disputes and below-the-belt tactics. The constitutional principles and the mechanisms designed to uphold them should never have been dragged into such a quagmire. The events surrounding the Constitutional Court in the last month of this saga are, in my opinion, the most alarming aspect of it all. The court, an institution that should have remained above political conflicts, found itself mired in the fray, raising doubts and interpretations that could have been avoided.
According to various sources I consulted while closely following this matter, the primary responsibility for reaching this point does not fall on Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi, despite his provocative defense of the project and the criticisms directed at how he managed dialogue with the lawyers. Rather, the primary accountability lies with Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch.
Ironically, the lawyers and their professional associations chose the wrong ally at a crucial moment in their struggle by placing their bets on Aziz Akhannouch. They believed he would be their path to removing the issue from Abdellatif Ouahbi's hands and salvaging what could be salvaged from their profession's law. However, the outcome was entirely the opposite. A sensitive professional and legislative file was removed from its natural arena and placed into the context of broader political calculations, just months ahead of the September 23 elections.
It can be argued that the lawyers began to lose their battle the moment they met with Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch in February 2026 and ended up forming a special committee to discuss their points of contention with the Justice Minister, subsequently suspending their protests temporarily based on that. The issue was not in principle; it was in the consequences.
Before Akhannouch's intervention, it was tactically understandable that the lawyers would aim to stretch the legislative timeline and push the project toward the end of the term without completing the issuance process, especially when consensus with the Justice Minister appeared impossible. This was a known professional and political pressure battle with defined boundaries and tools. However, once the Prime Minister himself became involved in the conflict, the matter transcended mere legislation. Every concession became a victory for one party and every advancement a defeat for another. The space for compromise turned into a battleground.
Most concerning was that Akhannouch, when he chose to intervene so forcefully and took the file from the Justice Minister, who had been entrusted with overseeing this sector as a member of his government, placed himself fully responsible for the outcome. If the disagreement with the Justice Minister had reached a point where he could no longer oversee one of the most critical texts of his term, the Prime Minister had a clear political choice: either to allow the minister to remain responsible for his sector and his project or to bear the consequences of bringing the conflict to its institutional conclusion and seek the King's relief from the minister.
However, to politically remove the file from the minister without withdrawing governmental responsibility from him, and then to conduct a parallel battle behind the project, is precisely the kind of "small play" that ultimately leads everyone to lose. And that is indeed what happened.
On July 6 and 7, 2026, Parliament definitively approved the law in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. Coincidentally, this occurred while Aziz Akhannouch was in Oujda for party activities related to the upcoming elections. While there, he communicated again with the President of the Moroccan Bar Association and the Oujda lawyer, Hussein Zayani, and later contacted the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rachid Talbi Alami, to refer the law to the Constitutional Court.
It became evident that the lawyers may have indeed chosen an ineffective advocate for their cause. This was not because referring the law to the court was in itself a mistake, but because the manner in which it was executed resulted in a scenario that is hard to fathom: the issuance process was suspended by the King, the file reached the Constitutional Court, and after a month of waiting, it was discovered that the court had not received the document it deemed necessary for its review—the final version of the law as approved by Parliament.
The court's ruling on August 10 was explicit on this point. The referral letter was accompanied by a report from the Justice and Legislation Committee in the House of Councillors, including the law as approved by the House of Representatives on July 6, but it was not accompanied by the text of the law as finalized on July 7. Based on this, the court concluded that it did not have the subject of review available in a manner that would allow it to make a ruling. Herein lie the pressing questions.
The court did not dismiss the referral outright from the first day. It had already opened the procedure, identified the relevant law, communicated with the authorized entities to submit observations, and the House of Representatives received correspondence from it on July 13 regarding this matter. It also received observations from the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House of Councillors, and members of Parliament.
So how did it eventually conclude, after all this, and nearly exhausting the entire deadline, that the text itself was not available to it in the legal form that would enable it to examine it? Did the court truly fail to access the final version of the law? Did it request it from the referring party, namely the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and not receive it? If it did request it, why did the Speaker not respond to such a straightforward yet serious request? And was the House of Councillors, which must have the version it approved on July 7, willing to provide the court with it, or did it take another stance during the observation phase?
Why was the court able, in the civil procedure law case a year prior, to access the final version of the text even though it was not originally accompanied by a referral letter, while the absence of this document this time prevented it from exercising review? There may be compelling legal and technical answers to all of this. The court may have applied a stricter understanding of its jurisdiction this time. I have no basis to pass judgment on the intentions of its members or their deliberations, nor do I need to.
However, the issue runs deeper. Did the Constitutional Court inadvertently involve itself in petty political games along the way to this outcome? Was it placed, due to the manner in which the referral was managed and the stakes involved, in the position of a party expected to conclude a political battle that began outside its walls? And did Aziz Akhannouch develop a prior conviction that the court would repeat what it did in the civil procedure law, intervening in the text to extract unconstitutional provisions, even if the referring party did not present specific objections? Who shaped this preconceived notion?
The memo submitted by the Authenticity and Modernity Party to the court dedicated a central part of its arguments to what it termed a "white referral," meaning a complete law referred to the court without specifying particular provisions alleged to violate the constitution or outlining the nature of these violations. The memo even went so far as to consider this type of referral a danger to the nature of constitutional review because it obligates the court to search for constitutional flaws independently, potentially placing it in a political position inconsistent with its judicial function.
Did all parties end up urging the court, each in their own way, not to engage in the substance of the matter at all? Did everyone, including the Prime Minister, turn against the path they initiated, leaving the court and its president alone before an incomplete referral, without a final text and without specific constitutional objections? These questions are not a trial of the Constitutional Court but rather a political examination of how the file reached its doorstep.
Thus, if there was any victory achieved in this battle, it is challenging to identify its owner. Abdellatif Ouahbi got his law, yes. The lawyers lost a significant gamble they placed to halt it. Aziz Akhannouch intervened to "rescue them," resulting in the law being published in the official journal. As for the Constitutional Court, it emerged from the story surrounded by questions that everyone could have spared it from facing.
That is why I say the catastrophe is not the law itself, for those who sought to overthrow the law governing the legal profession ended up jeopardizing the very authority of the mechanism designed to uphold the constitution. And those who called upon the Prime Minister as their political advocate against the Justice Minister discovered too late that their advocate not only lost their case but also turned the courtroom itself into a wreck.
As reported by thevoice.ma.
