Tracking Judicial Change towards More Legal Certainty through Citation Analysis: A Case Study on the Legal Basis for Compensation Rulings before Saudi Commercial Courts after the Enactment of the Civil Transactions Law

Background: Legal certainty is a guiding principle in all European countries. One of the main tools for achieving legal certainty in Europe is the codification of law. In 2023, Saudi Arabia adopted its first codification of contractual and non-contractual obligations through the Civil Transactions Law (CTL), aiming to achieve greater legal certainty. This shift represents a major shift from a predominantly Shariah-based jurisdiction towards civil law. This research examines whether the enactment of the CTL has influenced the Saudi Commercial Court's interpretation of compensation claims. Methods: A mixed-methods approach was adopted to track citation trends over time and to examine case law documents to confirm the quantitative results. Qualitative empirical analysis, specifically document analysis, was utilised to identify and extract Shariah jurists’ opinions, providing depth to the statistical results. Quantitative empirical methods, including interrupted time series (ITS), were applied to assess whether the compensation provisions in the CTL led to significant shifts in compensation claims decisions. Overall, 2,913 cases decided before the enactment of the CTL and 61 decided under the CTL were analysed in this study. Results and conclusions: The pre-law analysis indicates that courts cited Shariah jurists or general legal principles to establish the liability for compensation. In contrast, post-law analysis suggests a discernible shift, with courts increasingly citing civil law provisions directly, notably Articles 120 and 720 of the CTL. This shift is supported by an increase in overall article citations within compensation judgments, rising from 36% to 62%, supported by the examination of cases decided based on these articles. These findings indicate that the enactment of the Civil Transactions Law has contributed to enhancing the legal certainty in Saudi commercial courts.