The Lebanese public institutions are facing the gravest crisis and most important milestone for forging a reformist process. Lebanon’s judiciary, as a power and an institution, is marked by political interference, institutional paralysis, and widespread erosion of public trust. Weakened trust, combined with low judicial morale, has peaked following the financial crisis and the Beirut Port Blast. While calls for reforms have existed for decades, the convergence of international pressure, civil society activism, and domestic demands has created a narrow window of opportunity for politically feasible judicial reform.
In this report, ALEF-act for human rights has adopted Mushtaq Khan’s political settlement framework to assess not only what reforms are needed, but what reforms are possible given Lebanon’s current power dynamics. It moves beyond technocratic prescriptions to analyse the political economy sustaining judicial dysfunction and identify entry points for practical, sequenced reform.

Ultimately, the paper argues that reforming Lebanon’s judiciary requires an approach that balances normative ambition with pragmatic action. Change will be incremental, shaped by both bottom-up pressure and top-down consent. If leveraged strategically, the current political moment (framed by donor conditions, civil society mobilization, and electoral recalibration) can yield tangible gains in one of Lebanon’s most contested institutions.