©️The Newlist
Invited this Friday 26 December 2025 on Magik 9, the lawyer Patrick Laurent delivered a dense and critical legal analysis of the decree on the High Court of Justice. At the heart of his intervention: the application of article 26 of the Constitution, the automatic transfer of judicial powers, the prolonged absence of Parliament and the risks of impunity or political instrumentalization of justice in Haiti.
A clear but inapplicable constitutional framework
Mr. Patrick Laurent recalls from the outset that the Haitian Constitution is still in force and that it provides for a special regime of prosecution for high government clerks. Article 26 explicitly extends to the President of the Republic and to Councillors-Presidents the constitutional rules relating to crimes and offences committed in the performance of their duties.
In theory, these offences are the responsibility of the High Court of Justice, not the ordinary courts.
According to Mr Laurent, a major legal development has taken place with the idea of automatic referral: once a judicial court is seized of a case involving a large State clerk for acts related to his duties, this court becomes incompetent for the benefit of the High Court of Justice.
This principle is intended to ensure respect for the Constitution, but it faces a major reality: the High Court of Justice is not constituted.
An institutional blockage almost 15 years old
The lawyer places the problem in a historical perspective. Since the judgment of the Gonaïves Court of Appeal in 2006 in the Yvon Neptune case, the Haitian justice recognizes its incompetence in judging the functional acts of senior officials.
In 2008, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Haitian State and demanded the adoption of a law specifying the functioning of the High Court of Justice. Fifteen years later, this requirement remains a dead letter, particularly because of the absence of Parliament.
The contested decree and its shadow zones
Patrick Laurent wondered about certain provisions of the decree, in particular those which provided that, from the date of its publication, any court already seized would automatically be transferred to the High Court of Justice.
In a context of reports of abuses, suspicions of corruption and misappropriation of justice by certain public actors, this automaticity may appear suspicious or even dangerous if it leads to a total paralysis of prosecution.
The lawyer insists on the fundamentally political nature of the indictment of the major State clerks. According to the Constitution, only the Chamber of Deputies can vote the indictment by qualified majority, while the Senate must establish the High Court of Justice.
Without a functional Parliament, none of these steps are possible. The risk, he stressed, is to create a system where the absence of institutions becomes a factor of impunity, even if the texts exist.
A universal issue, not only Haitian
To illustrate the political dimension of the process, Mr. Laurent referred to international examples, in particular the impeachment procedures in the United States against Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, where the absence of a qualified majority in the Senate prevented any conviction.
According to him, political justice obeys power relations everywhere, but in Haiti, the absence of institutions exacerbates the problem to the point of completely blocking the system.
In conclusion, Mr Patrick Laurent considers that the decree on the High Court of Justice responds to a real legal necessity, resulting from an old and unresolved dispute. However, without Parliament and without a properly constituted High Court, its application could increase suspicions of instrumentalisation and further undermine the credibility of the rule of law.
The solution, he said, cannot be merely normative: it is primarily institutional and political.
W.A.
