Uganda’s military law amendment attempting to nullify Supreme Court judgment, challenged by way of a Public Interest Litigation

Readers would be aware of the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of Uganda wherein the apex court of the country by way of a judgment running into 306 pages, had declared illegal the trial of civilians by military courts. The court had also opined on many other aspects of military law.

Two editors of this blog (Eugene Fidell and Navdeep Singh) had written a detailed opinion piece on the judgment for Bar & Bench in February 2025 where we had pointed out that the Supreme Court had ruled that the system of court-martial was not independent and impartial, that it could not try civilians, and that the legislative provision subjecting military personnel to trial by court-martial for offences under the civilian criminal code were unconstitutional. We had further pointed out that the court made a variety of suggestions for measures the government could take to remedy the defects it had identified.

As was widely expected, an amendment of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces Act was moved to nullify most of the dicta of the Supreme Court, to which assent was given by the country’s president. Many of the provisions of the amendments are in teeth of the judgment.

The story, however, was not to end there. Now, a Public Interest Litigation has been filed in the Constitutional Court of Uganda by a citizen, Mr Dennis Daniel Ssemugenyi that the amendments have been initiated not only to circumvent and override the judgment of the apex court but are even otherwise unconstitutional since these threaten the very basics of independence of judiciary, separation of powers and prosecutorial independence.

A detailed report on the challenge can be accessed at Monitor.

Though the filing of a petition does not result in an automatic stay of the new law, it does provide a ray of hope by putting it in jeopardy if the court finally reaches a conclusion that it is ultra vires.