Author(s): Emna Chikhaoui, Shafiqul Hassan, Yusuff Jelili Amuda
This paper describes legal exhaustiveness based on the existing legal principles in order to address the impact of COVID-19 outbreak in the context of Saudi Arabia. Legal exhaustiveness refers to possible inclusion of essential legal principles in solving legal related issues of COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, a number of studies have been conducted from different perspectives in addressing the ongoing challenge of COVID-19 in various parts of the world including Saudi Arabia. However, little connection is made in harmonizing conventional legal principles with Islamic legal system in order to address the problem of COVID-19 in the country. This paper primarily aims at utilizing legal exhaustiveness by exploring legal principles that can be instrumental in solving the challenges of COVID-19. In so doing, systematic literature review (SLR) is used as methodology of the paper whereby five themes were generated which were subsequently presented as results of the study. The results indicated that, the Saudi Arabian government has cancelled mass gatherings such as Umrah as part of measures to curtail further transmission of COVID-19. It is reiterated that, the SharÄ«’ah legal system of Saudi Arabia can be harmonized with legal doctrines of force majeure, impossibility & frustration and impracticality) that are found in English law commonly in practice in England and USA which are similar to SharÄ«Ê»ah doctrines of Quwa Qahira, Al-Zourouf Al-Tari’a and Istilaha. The result further showed that, the doctrine of impossibility is more appropriate and relevant in addressing the problem of COVID-19 in the context of Saudi Arabia as compared to the principle of frustration due to the fact that, COVID-19 hinders the performance of contractual activities by the parties that are involved in the socio-economic contract in the country. The implication of this paper is that, it provides substantial shape to employment and commercial laws in Saudi Arabia especially by providing safety to the employees in order to avoid unnecessary loose of job as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is therefore suggested that, the government of Saudi Arabia should use the expertise of legal team in the country by utilizing the identified variables explored in this paper. Additionally, the conceptual framework investigated in this study can be empirically investigated by further studies. Lastly, the limitation of the paper is lack of accessibility to some studies on various variables that are explored in this study. Nonetheless, the paper has provided substantial direction for future and further studies.