The Shura Council is currently presided over by Judge Ghazi Al-Janabi who met with GJPI on Tuesday 17 March 2009. The Shura Council is comparable with the Conseil D’Etat in France.
As presently constituted, the Shura Council comes under the aegis of the Ministry of Justice. A replacement to be known as the State Council, independent of the Ministry of Justice, is one of the many potential bodies envisaged by the constitution but which have not yet come into being.
Section 3 of the Constitution is headed ‘Federal Powers’. Chapter 3 of Section 3 is headed ‘The Judicial Power’. Within that Chapter, under the subheading of ‘General Provision’, Article 101 states that:
A State Council may be established, specialized in functions of the administrative judiciary, issuing opinions, drafting, and representing the State and various public commissions before the courts except those exempted by law.