High Court of Justice: When a transitional authority frames the aftermath it will no longer control

The publication, in December 2025, of the decree organizing and governing the High Court of Justice by the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) calls for a rigorous, dispassionate, and institutionally grounded reading. The central question is not whether this decree is legally conceivable or politically appropriate, but why it was adopted at this precise moment, while Parliament — the exclusive constitutional source of this institution — does not exist, and while the CPT itself is expected to leave power on February 7, with no possibility of extending its mandate.

This point is neither hypothetical nor interpretative: it is explicitly established by the decree of April 10, 2024, which created the Transitional Presidential Council and defines its transitional nature, duration, and limited mission, without providing any mechanism for extension, renewal, or institutional continuity beyond the fixed date.

This inquiry therefore falls within an institutional analysis grounded in the positive law applicable to the TPC and in the political temporality in which the normative act is situated.

I. A Constitutional Institution Never Made Operational

The High Court of Justice is expressly provided for by the 1987 Constitution as the supreme accountability mechanism empowered to try the highest state officials — the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, ministers, and other senior officials — following impeachment by the Chamber of Deputies and trial by the Senate sitting as a High Court.

Yet, nearly forty years after the Constitution’s adoption, no legislation has ever formalized the organization and functioning of this institution. This silence is neither accidental nor insignificant.

The High Court constitutes a radical instrument of political accountability: making it fully operational implies that power accepts submission to an exceptional jurisdiction capable of disrupting established balances. Moreover, legal ambiguity has long functioned as a collective protective zone for both the Executive and Parliament, which acts simultaneously as accuser and judge.

This lack of formalization therefore reflects less a normative deficiency than a structurally maintained political inertia.

II. Does the Constitution Require an Organic Law?

The debate remains open and legally serious. One interpretation considers the High Court of Justice self-executing: the Constitution designates the competent bodies, defines required majorities, and would allow the Senate to constitute itself as a High Court without prior legislation, applying its internal rules and general principles of criminal procedure by analogy.

Another equally grounded interpretation holds that a law is required to remedy procedural gaps in order to ensure:
legal certainty,
predictability of applicable rules,
defense rights,
compliance with fair trial guarantees under Haiti’s international commitments.

The Constitution thus deliberately left the High Court in a zone of normative indeterminacy, betting on an institutional maturity that has never been politically assumed.

III. The TPC Decree: A Response Outside Its Natural Locus

It is within this context that the TPC intervenes, invoking the absence of Parliament and the need to fill a legal vacuum.

The difficulty lies not in the object — organizing the High Court — but in the author of the norm. The High Court of Justice belongs organically to the legislative branch, both by its composition and its function. Yet a transitional executive power is now defining its rules.

The decree was adopted without institutional contradiction. No parliamentary debate occurred, no committee hearings were held, no representative body proposed amendments. The framework is defined unilaterally, in a configuration of complete power asymmetry.

Moreover, the decree does not activate the High Court. It cannot do so in the absence of Parliament. It merely prefigures its operation by anticipation.

IV. Preventive Self-Normation

The most revealing element of the decree lies in the explicit extension of rules applicable to the President of the Republic to the President-Councilors of the TPC.

This raises a question of legal qualification — or rather of legitimate suspicion: the Constitution does not recognize a collegial presidency. Can a sui generis transitional body be assimilated by decree to the constitutional regime of an individual presidential office?

Beyond this issue, the mechanism produces a double movement. It formally recognizes the justiciability of the TPC while embedding it within a procedural framework entirely defined by the TPC itself.

This constitutes an act of preventive self-normation: acceptance of the principle of potential prosecution is accompanied by the prior establishment of the rules governing its future exercise after leaving power. It is not legal immunity — the decree is reversible — but a pre-framing of accountability conditions, reflecting ex-ante risk management.

V. The Illusion of Fighting Impunity
In the absence of Parliament, this decree strengthens no effective accountability mechanism. No impeachment can be initiated. No judgment can be rendered.

Its primary effect is discursive: affirming the existence of judicial instruments while the institutional conditions for their implementation are nonexistent.

No prosecution before the High Court of Justice is legally conceivable until Parliament is restored. The TPC is fully aware of this. The decree therefore targets not immediate accountability, but deferred and hypothetical responsibility, dependent on a future institutional context beyond its control.

VI. Procedural Locks with Deterrent Effects

The decree multiplies super-majority requirements, internal commissions, and heavy procedures. What theoretically protects against arbitrariness may in practice function as a prohibitive threshold, particularly in a fragmented political environment. These choices generate a deterrent effect: any prosecution initiative becomes politically costly, institutionally slow, and symbolically risky.

The objective is not to prevent all future action, but to increase its political and institutional cost.

VII. The Decisive Factor: February 7

The legal point is established: the decree creating the TPC provides no mechanism for mandate extension. February 7 marks the end of the legal framework that grounded its existence.

After that date, the TPC:
will no longer control the state apparatus,
will no longer possess any normative basis to act,
cannot remain in power without departing from the act that instituted it. Can acquired rights be invoked?

The decree on the High Court must therefore be read as an act of institutional closure, adopted before total loss of control.

VIII. Political Orientation and Electoral Environment

This decree does not manipulate suffrage. It operates through institutional incentives. By establishing in advance a legally heavy and politically deterrent framework, it makes certain options rational and others costly for future parliamentarians. It thus favors a Parliament more inclined to manage the normative inheritance than to overturn it.

It is not about rigging elections, but about conditioning the post-election environment.

IX. Conclusion

This decree does not fill a constitutional vacuum. It exploits a long-standing ambiguity. It does not make the High Court operational. It pre-organizes its future conditions.

It does not guarantee impunity. It frames and politicizes potential accountability mechanisms. This decree should be read as one of the last possible normative acts of a transitional power aware that its mandate is legally bounded and politically concluded at a fixed date.

It is not an act of institutional refoundation. It is an act of normative anticipation by a power nearing its end — while, of course, preventing witch hunts and politically abusive prosecutions against those who served the Nation. Even in politics, moderation must be recommended to prevent excess without instituting impunity.

Chantal Volcy Céant
January 19, 2026