This archive report was first published on 22 October 2021.
Supreme Court Urged to Reject International Experts' Application ¶
Orange Democratic Movement leader Raila Odinga and the Building Bridges Initiative secretariat have urged the Supreme Court to reject an application by five international law experts to join the BBI appeal.
The five professors, Richard Albert (US), Yaniv Roznai (Israel), Rosalind Dixon (Australia), David E. Landau (US), and Gautam Bhatia (India), had applied to join the case as amici curiae - friends of the court.
However, Raila and the BBI secretariat argued that the application was late and had ulterior motives, with the court papers stating that the professors had 'all along been aware of the proceedings from the High Court and never made any attempts to participate or be joined.'
The BBI team added that the five professors would repeat the same argument presented in court by anti-BBI teams, as they had not demonstrated how their submissions would assist the Supreme Court.
On October 22, 2021, the court directed that it would make a ruling on a scheduled date but urged parties that had not responded to the application for joinder to do so by Friday, October 22.
US-based Prof Richard Albert had argued that the BBI bill should have been argued as a constitutional dismemberment rather than a constitutional amendment in the junior courts that declared the initiative null and void.
Albert's book, Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking and Changing Constitutions, was cited during the BBI arguments at the High Court and Court of Appeal by anti-BBI proponents.
On Thursday, May 13, 2021, a 5-judge bench declared BBI as null and void.
