Rights
1987 Constitution, amended 2011, under prolonged transitional governance
The Constitution of 1987, adopted after the fall of the Duvalier regime and amended in 2011, provides for a semi-presidential system with a President, a Prime Minister and a bicameral legislature. Since January 2020 Parliament has not functioned for want of elections, and following the assassination of President Moïse in July 2021 governance has run through transitional arrangements, including the Conseil Présidentiel de Transition established in 2024. The Conseil Constitutionnel provided for in the 2011 amendments has never been fully constituted.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Unitary state; Cour de cassation sits at the apex of the judiciary
- Deadline — Constitutional review: no functioning Conseil Constitutionnel, so no effective route
- Deadline — Recours en cassation: lodged with the Cour de cassation within the statutory period
Governing law
- Constitution de la République d'Haïti 1987, amended 2011
- Décret of 2024 establishing the Conseil Présidentiel de Transition
- Loi portant organisation judiciaire
In practice
Any statement about Haitian law must be read against the institutional reality: with no sitting legislature since 2020, normative acts have taken the form of executive decrees whose constitutional basis is contested, and the absence of a constitutional court leaves no domestic forum to resolve that contest. Practitioners should verify the current status of any instrument before relying on it, because the pace of change and the gaps in official publication are both significant.