Brief History of the Amhara Regional Supreme Court
The establishment of the Amhara Regional Supreme Court is related with the establishment of Region 3 (Three) in the aftermath of the fall of the Derg Regime and the coming into power of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 1991. It is to be recalled that immediately after the fall of the Derg government, a Transitional Government of Ethiopia was established in July 1991 in light of the Transitional Period Charter of Ethiopia. Region 3 (Three), the present Amhara Regional State, was one of the 14 National/Regional Self-Governments established as per Arts 3 and 9 (1) of the National/Regional Self-Governments Establishment Proclamation No. 7/1992. The Constitution of the Transitional Government of Region Three, Proclamation No.2/1993, constituted Regional legislative, executive and judicial organs under Art 21. This Transitional Constitution explicitly provided that judicial power in the Region as being vested in the Regional Supreme Court and other lower zonal and wereda (district) courts of the Region.
In accordance with the Constitution of the Transitional Government of the Region, the then legislative body (the Council of the Transitional Government of Region Three) thus issued for the first time in the history of the Amhara Regional State a proclamation that provided for the establishment of courts in the Region. This proclamation referred to as the “Proclamation to Establish the Courts of the Transitional Government of Region Three, Proclamation No. 3/1993” and which entered into force as of the 25th of June 1993 explicitly established the three-tiered levels of courts as the Regional Supreme Court, Zonal High Courts and Wereda Courts. Immediately thereafter, the President of the Regional Supreme Court was appointed by the Transitional Regional Council and that was followed by the appointment of other judges to the three levels of courts. What was put in place during the Transitional period continued with the re-establishment of the Amhara National Regional State Supreme and its lower zonal and wereda courts in view of the establishment of the Amhara National Regional State as per the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1994) and the Constitution of the Amhara National Regional State (1995).