RIYADH, 9 February, 2021 (TON): Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince announced plans to approve a set of new draft laws designed to enhance the efficiency and integrity of the kingdom's judicial system on Monday.

A series of social and economic reforms aimed at modernizing the conservative kingdom, which has no codified system of law to go with the texts making up sharia, or Islamic law have been launched by the prince, MBS.

The media quoted the prince on Monday as saying that four new laws, the personal status law, the civil transactions law, the penal code of discretionary sanctions and the law of evidence  are currently being finalized and will then be submitted to the cabinet and relevant bodies as well as the advisory Shura Council, before they are finally approved.

"The new laws represent a new wave of reforms that will ... increase the reliability of procedures and oversight mechanisms as cornerstones in achieving the principles of justice, clarifying the lines of accountability," Prince Mohammed said in the statement.

Setting clear codes to four major and fundamental laws through applying the best international practices and standards means the kingdom is "definitely moving towards codifying the entire law" to meet the needs of the modern world while adhering to Islamic Sharia principles, a Saudi official told the media.

"While there is a decent and independent judiciary, the main criticism is that it is not consistent and judges have significant discretion on many of these issues, which leads to inconsistency and unpredictability," the Saudi official said.

As we know already that Saudi Arabia had no written laws that resulted discrepancy in court rulings when certain incidents happen, that had hurt many Saudis, mostly women. However, this step would lead to an entirely codified law.