Legislative reforms drive a leap in case dismissals
The country has witnessed a qualitative leap in consolidating the delivery of justice, based on a package of legislative and regulatory reforms that coincide with moving forward to adopt a modern model that integrates artificial intelligence innovations while safeguarding judicial guarantees and data confidentiality.
The measures, which accelerated in pace since May of last year, were distributed across several tracks, including expediting the resolution of cases, creating effective solutions for the backlog of appeals and judicial notices, launching stages of electronic litigation, and developing legal texts that serve the justice system.
In July of last year, the Ministry of Justice announced that the Court of Cassation, in cooperation with the Supreme Council of the Judiciary and the Civil Service Council, would begin operating several new specialized circuits for reviewing appeals, with the aim of addressing their backlog and accelerating their resolution.
In September 2025, the President of the Court of Cassation, Dr. Adel Boursali, confirmed the success of the plan approved by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary and the Court of Cassation administration in addressing the problem of case congestion and accumulation at the court. The Court of Cassation resolved 17,434 appeals during the 2025–2026 judicial year, representing a 17.7 percent increase compared to the 2024–2025 judicial year, during which 14,816 appeals were resolved.
The Supreme Council of the Judiciary stated in a recent statement that the Court of Cassation continued to resolve the issue of appeal congestion in implementation and enforcement of the high directives of the Amir of the country, and in completion of the plan approved by the Council in this regard.
For its part, the circuits of appealed misdemeanors at the Primary Court resolved 36,093 appeals during the 2025–2026 judicial year, an increase of 203 percent over the preceding year, covering the period from October 2025. This resulted in reducing the duration for scheduling hearings for these appeals to no more than two months from the date of depositing the appeal petition at the registry of the Primary Court, whereas this duration previously exceeded two years.
Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal, through its various circuits, resolved 104 percent of the appeals during the 2025–2026 judicial year. A total of 31,790 appeals were presented to all circuits of the court during the period from October 1, 2025, to the end of April last year. Of these, 33,195 appeals were resolved, including appeals from that period, plus deferred appeals from previous periods.
“Adel” indicators showed a record high in the number of electronic notices in criminal cases, totaling 27,665 notices during the period from June 7 to July 9, 2026, compared to only 12 notices during the same period in 2025. This shift reflects the actual transition to the electronic notice system in criminal procedures.
Additionally, Kuwait launched in early July the first phase of the electronic litigation system for criminal orders, as the first system of its kind in the country, through which a fully electronic judgment is issued in this track.
