Prepared by: Mohab Saeed, Legal Advisor at the Foundation<\/p>\n
Edited by: Asmaa El-Banna, Research Coordinator at the Foundation<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Methodology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Preamble: Definition and Philosophy of the Urgent Motion in Administrative Judiciary<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Section One: Between Urgent Protection and Judicial Practice: Monitoring Rulings of the 7th and 19th Circuits<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Section Two: The Urgent Motion as a “Procedural Loophole”: How the Administration Exploits the Absence of Temporary Protection to Harass Academics<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Conclusion and Recommendations<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Methodology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This commentary relies on monitoring and qualitative analysis of judicial rulings. It covers requests to stay the execution of administrative decisions. These cases were heard before the 7th and 19th Circuits of the Administrative Judiciary Court. The scope covers the judicial year 2025\u20132026. These two circuits were selected based on the nature of their disputes. Their disputes involve appeals affecting individuals’ legal and employment statuses.<\/p>\n This particularly applies to workers in education and certain service sectors. The monitoring relied on the electronic database available via the State Council’s QR code. Claims including a request to stay the execution of the challenged decision were tallied. This request represents the core tool for urgent judicial protection under study.<\/p>\n Additionally, the commentary analyzed several cases supported legally by the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE). These cases involve faculty members and their assistants. The goal is to practically assess the effects of absent or ineffective urgent judicial protection. The cases included models related to appointment, promotion, and academic tenure. These cases do not serve as a representative statistical sample. Instead, they act as case studies to help explain the findings of the judicial monitoring. They also link abstract judicial practice to its real impact on protected individuals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The right to litigation is an inherent constitutional right, and a main pillar of the rule of law. It guarantees individuals access to the judiciary to protect their rights and legal positions against any infringement or decision affecting their interests. However, the administrative judiciary currently faces a significant challenge: slow litigation and a large backlog of appeals and cases. This crisis stems from several factors, including the rising volume of administrative disputes and complex judicial procedures. They also include the huge caseload compared to the number of judges and available resources.<\/p>\n This crisis is particularly important in administrative law. The legal relations governed by this branch of law are dynamic by nature. They directly affect individuals’ rights and legal positions. Here, legal position refers to the status or right a person enjoys by law, which an administrative decision may affect. Therefore, prolonged delays in resolving disputes can make judicial protection ineffective, even if granted eventually. Justice may shift from an active means of protecting rights to a merely theoretical protection after it is too late. Consequently, this can undermine the rule of law and erode individuals’ confidence in the judiciary’s ability to provide effective protection for their rights.<\/p>\n In light of this issue, and to prevent slow litigation from practically denying justice, the importance of the “urgent motion” in administrative judiciary emerges. It is the part of the lawsuit heard rapidly to request temporary protection for a right or legal position pending a ruling on the merits of the dispute.<\/p>\n One of the most prominent forms of this protection is the request to stay the execution of an administrative decision. This means asking the court to temporarily suspend the decision’s execution when its continued enforcement causes damage that is difficult or impossible to remedy later. In this context, the philosophy of the urgent motion rests on providing fast, preventive judicial protection. This prevents serious harm before the judiciary can render a final ruling on the merits of the case.<\/p>\n Despite the clear theoretical basis behind the philosophy of the urgent motion, its practical application raises several complex legal issues. On one hand, the criteria a judge uses to assess urgency and the severity of harm are highly flexible. This flexibility can lead to varying assessments from case to case based on specific circumstances.<\/p>\n On the other hand, defining the boundary between granting temporary protection that does not touch the merits of the case and taking an action that practically resolves the dispute before the final ruling can be difficult. This complexity increases alongside slow litigation procedures. The long duration of the main lawsuit may cause the ruling on the urgent motion to significantly impact the parties’ legal positions, despite being legally a temporary measure.<\/p>\n Hence, the main question of this commentary revolves around examining the extent to which legal and judicial mechanisms governing the urgent motion in administrative judiciary succeed in achieving a balance between two interconnected goals: first, ensuring temporary and effective protection for individuals against potential damage to their rights or legal positions caused by administrative decisions; and second, preserving public interest considerations and ensuring the regular operation of the administration and public utilities, amid the ongoing crisis of slow litigation and the backlog of administrative disputes.<\/p>\n The commentary addresses this issue by surveying and analyzing rulings issued on requests to stay the execution of administrative decisions before the 7th and 19th Circuits of the Administrative Judiciary Court during the judicial year 2025\u20132026. Additionally, it addresses several cases supported by the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression involving faculty members and their assistants to demonstrate the impact and consequences of denying urgent motions in these cases.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Preamble: Definition and Philosophy of the Urgent Motion in Administrative Judiciary<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The urgent motion (action to stay execution) is an essential pillar and a vital guarantee in the administrative judiciary. Its philosophy rests on balancing the administration’s need to enforce decisions immediately to run public services against individuals’ protection from irreparable harm if those decisions are executed incorrectly.<\/p>\n As a rule, filing an annulment lawsuit against an administrative decision does not suspend its execution, since administrative decisions enjoy a presumption of legality and are immediately enforceable. Here, the urgent motion acts as a temporary exception. It is a request submitted within the main lawsuit asking the court to stay the decision’s execution immediately and temporarily until a final ruling on its legality is issued.<\/p>\n The judge orders a stay of execution only when two key conditions are met: seriousness, meaning the claim shows strong grounds that the decision will likely be annulled for being facially invalid, and urgency, meaning the decision’s execution would cause severe, irreparable damage before the case is resolved, such as demolishing a historic building or expelling a student days before exams.<\/p>\n As for the judicial and legislative philosophy underlying the urgent motion, it relies on several decisive legal and human dimensions. The first is averting severe harm that cannot be remedied by compensation. If the administration issues a decision to demolish a building or revoke a factory license, and the substantive lawsuit takes years, an annulment ruling after it is too late becomes worthless because the factory went bankrupt and the building was demolished, while financial compensation cannot restore the legal or psychological positions of the owners. Thus, the urgent motion intervenes as a preventive measure that prevents a disaster from occurring.<\/p>\n Balancing the public interest and individuals’ rights represents the second dimension. The urgent motion serves as the equilibrium point in the judicial scale by protecting the administration’s privilege of direct execution to ensure the smooth operation of public utilities without arbitrary disruption, while conversely protecting the citizen from administrative overreach if the judge recognizes at first glance that the administration abused or deviated from its power.<\/p>\n This philosophy also manifests in providing temporary judicial protection through the “prima facie standard.” In the urgent motion, the judge does not delve into the merits of the right or issue a final ruling to settle the dispute. Instead, the judge takes a quick, preliminary look at the documents. If a clear violation of rights appears, the judge freezes the situation by staying execution to preserve the dispute’s subject matter and the parties’ positions until the court has time to examine the merits thoroughly.<\/p>\n Finally, the urgent motion acts as a safety valve for social peace and confidence in the administration. When individuals feel that a judicial authority can immediately curb unfair administrative decisions, their faith in the rule of law strengthens. This reduces their tendency to take the law into their own hands or physically resist state decisions, thereby preserving public order and social peace.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Section One: Between Urgent Protection and Judicial Practice: Monitoring Rulings of the 7th and 19th Circuits<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n To evaluate whether the urgent motion achieves its purpose, the researcher conducted an investigative survey of rulings issued in urgent motions before the 7th and 19th Circuits of the Administrative Judiciary Court during the judicial year 2025\u20132026. The 7th Circuit of the Administrative Judiciary Court at the Egyptian State Council is a specialized judicial circuit. It examines disputes related to the education sector at various levels.<\/p>\n This circuit is particularly important due to the nature of disputes brought before it, which directly relate to the educational process and the legal positions of students, faculty members, and other staff in this sector. Consequently, the impact of its rulings is not limited to the litigants alone. In some cases, it extends to the functioning of the educational process and its associated rights and legal positions.<\/p>\n As for the 19th Circuit, it is one of the circuits of the Administrative Judiciary Court. It primarily specializes in disputes related to appeals to annul administrative decisions and claim compensation for them. This applies particularly to decisions issued against workers and employees in several service and strategic sectors in the state.<\/p>\n These disputes specifically cover sectors affiliated with the Ministry of Health and Population and Social Insurance, along with certain disputes related to the education sector within specific geographical or structural scopes. The rulings of this circuit are particularly important given their direct connection to individuals’ employment statuses, as well as the professional, financial, and legal effects resulting from the challenged administrative decisions.<\/p>\n Rulings issued on urgent motions before the 7th and 19th Circuits of the Administrative Judiciary Court were subjected to an investigative survey during the judicial year 2025\u20132026. This survey was conducted through the electronic database available via the State Council’s QR code, which provides access to relevant judgments and judicial data. The monitoring included counting appeals that contained a request to stay the execution of the challenged administrative decision, as this request represents the primary form of urgent judicial protection under study.<\/p>\n In this context, the statistical presentation of the rulings from the 7th and 19th Circuits serves as an important entry point for understanding the practical application of the urgent motion’s philosophy. It allows a shift from questioning abstract legal rules to examining how these rules operate within judicial reality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Statistical Comparison Table of Judicial Outcomes<\/strong><\/p>\n