Chief introduces the new issue of The Legal & Judicial Journal, highlighting various legal topics and issues across the journal’s four sections: Research, Commentary, Court of Cassation rulings, and Legal Opinions. The issue coincides with the twentieth anniversary of Civil Law No. 22 of 2004. The editor invites scholars to submit research for a special issue focusing on legislative and technological developments in civil law.

This year, 2024, marks the 20th anniversary of issuing the Qatari Civil Code, which is now entering its third decade, in alignment with various legislative developments in economic and social fields. One of the most notable developments is the issuance of a comprehensive new law for regulating real estate registration in Qatar, which comes after six decades of the old law issued in 1964. This new law is a significant step toward enhancing the legislative framework for property ownership, a core element in achieving sustainable economic development.

For the first time, the new law introduces an electronic registration system, simplifying registration processes and encouraging real estate investment. This study aims to shed light on the legislative updates brought by the new law, including the newly established mechanisms for property registration, the strengthening of registered property rights, and the effectiveness of these measures in addressing the practical challenges encountered under the previous law.

The study adopts a descriptive and analytical methodology to provide a comprehensive review of the law’s substantive and procedural amendments. It concludes with recommendations to develop the legal framework for real estate registration, enhancing its efficiency and keeping pace with modern advancements.

The research presents a specialized legal study, according to an applied evaluation approach to address the nature of the problems resulting from the effectiveness of the legal and institutional framework and its ability to recover funds and criminal proceeds derived from acts of corruption, whether at the domestic or international level, by shedding light on the most important obstacles and setbacks facing the process of recovering looted public funds, and ensuring the success of achieving its aspired purpose, which is returning it to its legitimate owners. As well as evaluating the role of anti-corruption agencies and law enforcement agencies in the Qatari legislator, with the aim of strengthening the realistic and deterrent roles in recovering looted public funds, which leads to the success of this process from its beginning to its end in an effective, fast, and unconventional way.

The research will reach several findings and a number of recommendations. The most important of which is for the administrative and control public institutions of the State of Qatar. The obstacles of international cooperation must be realized, and at the same time, mastering the possibilities of accessing the legal systems of the countries in which the looted funds are located, in order to reach the building of special capabilities that can access advanced means that simulate the data of reality, and adapt and adjust to the circumstances that differ according to each case resulting from the recovery of looted public funds, in a way that achieves the greatest possible effectiveness in this field that is intertwined and complex in nature.

This study deals with the regulatory and disciplinary accountability rules of civil employees in the Qatari Ministry of Interior, the provisions relating to the rules and procedures for disciplinary and regulatory accountability contained in the Military Service Law and the decisions issued pursuant to it apply to them, and the penalties that are applied to them in the event that they are proven to have committed a disciplinary violation are the penalties contained in the Human Resources Law, and at the same time, disciplinary penalties stipulated in the decision of the Minister of the Interior are applied to them. The legislator and the Qatari judiciary have guaranteed a number of safeguards for the civil employee during the investigation stage or before and after the imposition of the disciplinary or regulatory penalty, and although the texts—according to judicial jurisprudence—did not establish nullity due to neglecting to carry them out specifically, following these procedures is required by justice.

The study concluded that the legal nature of the decisions issued by the Appeals Disciplinary Council after ratification by the competent authority is a final administrative decision and not a judicial one. Therefore, it is permissible to file a lawsuit to cancel it within sixty days before the "Appellate Administrative Department," and its control is legal oversight. The law did not authorize imposing another disciplinary penalty after the annulment of the penalty decision deemed unlawful; thus, the administrative authority regains its power to impose the lawful penalty. The study recommended several measures to achieve consistency, most notably the need to regulate disciplinary and regulatory accountability rules for the civil employee at the Ministry of Interior within a single legislation to facilitate its application, in addition to recommendations to fill legislative gaps for some other matters.

This study deals with criminal intention in statutory law, in comparison with Islamic law. In the course of the study, the researcher explored the concept of criminal intention, its elements, and its types, both in statutory law and in Islamic criminal law. In which, the researcher relied upon descriptive and comparative analytical approaches. The study produced several outcomes. Mainly, the concept of criminal intention in statutory law does not differ from its concept in Islamic criminal law, since the criminal intention at its core is the manifestation of the offender's intention towards the criminal activity he has undertaken and the result of that criminal activity that he was aware of, with his knowledge of all of the elements that it is required by the law for the crime to be committed. Accordingly, the study produced a series of recommendations, including a call for the Qatari legislature to adopt the provisions of the Islamic Criminal Law, in particular those relating to criminal intention, since these provisions are the summary of the efforts of eminent jurists, all of which that were derived from the Islamic Shariah, which were revealed by the Lawgiver, “Allah” may he be praised and exalted, thus, sufficient to ensure that justice is achieved.

The role that the motive plays in establishing the criminal situation and describing it initially within the process of (criminalization), and then the role it plays in determining the amount of punishment is what gives research into the concept of the motive double importance, and from this standpoint this study came to shed light on the concept of the motive, and then To clarify the role it plays in the processes of criminalization and punishment in Qatari legislation, and some comparative penal legislation such as Egyptian and Jordanian legislation.
The study followed the descriptive and analytical approaches and the comparative approach, and was divided into an introductory section in which the concept of the motive and its relationship to some other terms was presented, and two main sections. The first section presented the impact that the motive has on the criminalization process, and finally the second section dealt with the impact that the researcher has on the punishment.
The study concluded with a set of results, the most notable of which is that although the Qatari legislator and some comparative legislation stipulate that the motive is not taken into account except in the circumstances specified by the law, examination of the texts shows that there is a significant impact of the motive in the process of criminalization and punishment, as the impact of the motive in the criminalization process appears from Through the theory of special intent, in which the motive sometimes becomes one of the elements of criminalization required by the legislator,In addition to the influence of the motive on the applicable reasons, the study also showed the influence that the motive plays on determining the punishment, which is embodied in some obligatory mitigating excuses stipulated by the law, and in the judge’s discretionary power to rule on the minimum punishment, and in the theory of mitigating discretionary reasons, while the effect of the motive appears in tightening the punishment. The penalty stipulates certain obligatory aggravating circumstances.
The study showed that the Qatari legislator agrees with his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts in all of these provisions, with some differences related to some crimes, and a significant difference with another legislative philosophy followed by Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi legislators that always and obligatorily recognizes the motive in assessing the punishment.
Finally, the study recommended that more attention be paid to the motive for the crime, especially during the investigation stage, by stipulating that the motive for the crime must be stated as much as possible in the public prosecution’s decisions regarding accusation or suspicion.