By the late 1990s, the Egyptian government was increasingly apprehensive about Supreme Constitutional Court activism. In less than two decades of operation, the SCC had become the most important avenue for political activists to challenge the regime, and the Court continued to issue scores of rulings that incrementally undermined the regime's levers of control. Egyptian human rights groups were exposing the repressive nature of the government both at home and abroad, and rights groups had begun to formalize their strategies of constitutional litigation. By 1998, rights groups were raising dozens of petitions for constitutional review every year. Intent on reasserting its authority, the regime steadily tightened its grip on the SCC, the human rights movement, and opposition parties in the late 1990s.

This chapter examines the fall of Supreme Constitutional Court independence between 1998 and 2005. In this period, the SCC and its judicial support network attempted to stave off political retrenchment by mobilizing on behalf of one another. Early challenges to the Supreme Constitutional Court generated resistance from opposition parties, human rights groups, professional syndicates, and the legal profession. Likewise, the SCC played a crucial role in defending the human rights movement and opposition parties with two of its boldest rulings: one against the government's repressive 1999 NGO law and another that required full judicial supervision of elections.