Dr. Raad Sami Al-Tamimi / Senior Political Adviser / Independent High Electoral Commission
Note: The views expressed in this study are personal and do not represent the position of any official body.
Dr. Faiq Zaidan, President of the Supreme Judicial Council, published an article entitled “The Sin of the Incorrect Interpretation of the Constitution” in Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday, March 3, 2026.
He wrote that article on the basis of both his academic and practical expertise, given that he holds a doctorate in law and rose through the judiciary to its highest office, namely the presidency of the Supreme Judicial Council in Iraq.
In that article, he raised issues of considerable importance, foremost among them the need to uphold the spirit of the Constitution. In his view, constitutional provisions require flexible interpretations that keep pace with the historical and political development of the period and should not remain confined to a particular historical or political moment. Rather, they should possess the flexibility required by political and historical developments, since history and life are continuous and dynamic. Constitutional and legal interpretations, therefore, should display the same quality if they are to respond to those developments.
He was right to emphasize the spirit of the Constitution, drawing on deep legal experience and relying in his analysis on one of the most important historical works in law and politics: Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748). That work was, and remains, a foundational study in political theory, constitutionalism, and public freedoms, in which Montesquieu argued that a constitution should reflect the nature of society and its historical and political development.
This is a work I have long used as a benchmark for assessing the depth of legal training and understanding among holders of law degrees. I often ask them a simple question: “Have you read Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws?” On that basis, I permit myself, in my own judgments, to assess how well some of them understand the law and how they handle constitutional and legal texts when formulating legal opinions and interpreting constitutional and statutory provisions. Do they treat such texts as rigid rules, or do they interpret them in light of the spirit of the law? Rigid interpretation can turn the law from a means of ordering public life and safeguarding rights and freedoms into a burden that may, at a minimum, deprive people of those rights.
At the core of the article is a critique of the Federal Supreme Court’s interpretation of the “largest parliamentary bloc” in Decision No. 25/Federal/2010, which held as follows: “The Federal Supreme Court considers the expression ‘the largest parliamentary bloc’ to mean either the bloc formed after the elections through a single electoral list that entered the elections under a particular name and number and won the largest number of seats, or the bloc assembled from two or more electoral lists that entered the elections under different names and numbers and then united as a single bloc with one identity in the Council of Representatives. Whichever of the two is greater in number becomes the largest parliamentary bloc whose nominee is tasked with forming the Council of Ministers pursuant to Article (76) of the Constitution.”
In line with the text of that decision, Dr. Zaidan argues that its interpretation of Article (76) should be reconsidered so that the bloc entitled to be described as the largest bloc under that constitutional provision is the bloc that won the highest number of seats in the elections.
This study proceeds from the following hypothesis: “The Federal Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article (76) is incorrect and is inconsistent with comparative constitutional jurisprudence and with political theory in this field, and that the bloc intended by Article (76) of the Constitution is the bloc that wins the greatest number of seats in the elections, not the bloc formed after the elections.”
This study therefore examines the position of constitutional jurisprudence and political theory on the matter, in addition to comparative international experience. It seeks to prove or refute that hypothesis by answering the following questions: What types of alliances exist? What is the difference between electoral alliances and political alliances? What is the position of comparative constitutional jurisprudence and political theory on this issue?
Does the Federal Supreme Court’s interpretation of the largest bloc accord with those approaches, or not? How have comparative international experiences dealt with this issue? The aim is to answer the principal question: how should Iraq understand and define the ‘largest parliamentary bloc’?
The article also proposed three remedies: first, amending the Constitution to define explicitly what is meant by the largest bloc; second, amending the Law of the Council of Representatives so that it requires the registration of the largest bloc at the Council’s first session; and third, reconsidering the Federal Supreme Court’s earlier decision and interpretation by adopting a restrictive reading that links the largest bloc to election results rather than to open-ended post-election alliances.
Accordingly, this study examines and analyzes the second and third remedies, and the extent to which they can be applied – or alternatively refined – in a way that reconciles the legal and political dimensions. It also presents selected comparative examples from other states, with a view to formulating a future legal and political framework that can be relied upon to resolve this controversy and adopted as a relatively settled approach to the formation of future governments.
The first remedy – amending the Constitution – is, however, difficult and not presently feasible, given the current constitutional, political, and social circumstances, as the article itself also notes.
This study adopts the descriptive-analytical method as its scientific basis for examining the political crisis surrounding the formation of the Iraqi government and the Federal Supreme Court’s interpretation of the concept of the largest parliamentary bloc. It does so by collecting and analyzing the relevant constitutional provisions and legislation, including Article (76) of the 2005 Constitution of the Republic of Iraq and Federal Supreme Court Decision No. 25/Federal/2010, while drawing on political theory in the field of comparative constitutional jurisprudence.
This method also relies on textual interpretation and on understanding the effects of those texts on government formation and political alliances through comparative analysis of international experience. That approach allows for a precise reading of the relationship between voter intent, the mechanisms for forming the largest bloc, and the stability of Iraq’s parliamentary system, and supports a balanced academic interpretation of the article’s proposals and the Court’s rulings, linking constitutional frameworks to the state’s political and social realities
