Procedures
A 1965 procedure code, with binding cassation precedent added only in 2005
The Civil Procedure Code 1965 still governs, modelled on Indian and thus English procedure despite Ethiopia's civil-law substance. Since 2005 decisions of the Federal Supreme Court's Cassation Division bind all lower courts.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Parallel federal and regional hierarchies; the Federal Supreme Court Cassation Division reviews fundamental errors of law from both.
Governing law
- Civil Procedure Code 1965
- Federal Courts Proclamation 1234/2021
- Arbitration and Conciliation Working Procedure Proclamation 1237/2021
In practice
Ethiopian procedure is a genuine hybrid and it catches people out: the substantive law is continental, drafted by a French comparativist, but the procedural code descends from the Indian Code of Civil Procedure and therefore from English practice, so pleadings, discovery-like production and execution follow common-law shapes. Cassation is the distinctive institution. It is not an ordinary third appeal but a review confined to fundamental error of law, and since Proclamation 454/2005 its rulings bind lower courts, which introduced binding precedent into a system that had formally rejected it. Proclamation 1237/2021 modernised arbitration substantially, adopting a framework close to the UNCITRAL Model Law and clarifying which disputes are non-arbitrable, and Ethiopia acceded to the New York Convention in 2020 — a change that reversed the previous position and matters greatly for enforcing foreign awards.