Sierra Leone’s Supreme Court has scheduled 7 October 2026 to hear matters challenging the process through which Parliament passed the Constitutional Amendment Bill, bringing the disputed legislation before the courts amid growing calls for legal clarity.
A public notice issued by the Supreme Court Registry on 15 September says all matters filed before the court relating to the Constitutional Amendment will be heard on that date and dealt with expeditiously to ensure their timely determination in accordance with the law.
The cases include challenges brought by the opposition All People’s Congress (APC) and the Lawyers’ Society, which have questioned aspects of the parliamentary process and the validity of the Bill’s passage.
The Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice said it is preparing the State’s response to three matters before the Supreme Court.
The Attorney General’s Office said the cases were filed following Parliament’s passage of the Bill and seek to challenge the validity of the process through which it was passed. It has also filed papers seeking to have the three applications consolidated, arguing that they raise substantially similar constitutional questions.
The legal dispute centres in part on the interpretation of Section 108(2) of the Constitution, which requires a constitutional amendment to be supported by “two-thirds of the Members of Parliament”.
The Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) had raised the same issue in a petition to President Julius Maada Bio on 4 September, before the current court hearing was announced.
In the petition, IGR Executive Director Andrew Lavali asked the President to seek the Supreme Court’s opinion on whether the Bill, as passed by Parliament, had become law and what the constitutional requirements were for its passage.
IGR specifically questioned whether “two-thirds of the Members of Parliament” meant two-thirds of MPs present at the time, two-thirds of all MPs whether present or absent, or whether a simple majority of MPs voting under Section 91(1) of the Constitution was sufficient.
The organisation said its monitoring showed that there had been no apparent disagreement over the meaning of the two-thirds requirement during the Bill’s First and Second Readings. It said the dispute emerged during the Committee Stage and ahead of the Third Reading, when opposition MPs walked out without voting.
IGR said the Bill had been submitted to the President for assent and urged him to refer the matter to the Supreme Court to help resolve the controversy.
The development also follows President Bio’s referral of a petition concerning the Constitutional Amendment Bill to the Supreme Court for its judicial opinion.
The constitutional amendment process has become increasingly contentious, with the APC disputing the parliamentary vote and the government defending the process.
The 7 October hearing will bring the competing legal arguments before the Supreme Court and could provide clarity on whether the parliamentary process complied with the constitutional requirements for amending the country’s Constitution.
