The Constitutional Court will be kept under the new constitution, after the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) yesterday rejected a proposed merger with the Supreme Court.
The CDC also agreed the number of charter court judges should stay at nine and that a judge's tenure will remain a single nine-year term.
The committee considered several proposals on changes to the charter court under the new constitution, its chairman Borwornsak Uwanno said yesterday.
Some National Legislative Assembly members had proposed the charter court be merged with the Supreme Court, while some members of the public had called for a return to the Constitutional Tribunal, which existed between 1946 and 1991.
Mr Borwornsak said the CDC agreed the charter court, which was formed about 17 years ago, should remain under the new constitution.
He said the scope of the charter court's duties is now wider than that of the old Constitutional Tribunal.
A merger with the Supreme Court would only drag the top court into a political mess, he added.
CDC spokesman Gen Lertrat Rattanawanich said the committee also did not see the need to change the number of charter court judges.
Two will be chosen from among Supreme Court judges, while two will be chosen from among Supreme Administrative Court judges.
The other five will be chosen by a selection committee.
Of the remaining five, three will be legal experts, another will be an expert in political science and the other will be from the field of public administration, Gen Lertrat said.
Each of the nine nominees will require more than two-thirds of the Senate's support to become charter court judges, he said.
If any fail to get Senate backing, a fresh selection process will be held, he said.
Gen Lertrat said the CDC also agreed that a charter court judge's tenure would still stand at the single nine-year term.
Gen Lertrat said the charter drafters have also come up with a new charter proposal which would bar public prosecutors from holding any office in state enterprises or being advisers to political-office holders.
A previous proposal sought only to bar prosecutors from being on state enterprise boards, he said.
This means if the new charter is enacted, prosecutors on state enterprise boards would have to quit them, Gen Lertrat said.