On the eve of the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution, “everyone was in the State Council” they say. 2010 became known as the year of the State Council wherein all battles for the rule of law, democracy, anti-corruption and for the independence of the judiciary were fought. Much has been written about the role of the judiciary and particularly that of the State Council in politics. Like all battlefronts, the council has played an instrumental role in the development of the human rights movement in Egypt, and vice-versa. This paper surveys the interrelated / integrated dynamics between the Egyptian judiciary, particularly the State Council, on the one hand and the human rights movement, on the other. The paper starts with the late 1980s when an array of milestone labor cases began to first enshrine principles of international law practically within Egyptian legislative system. The paper will focus on primary materials from the State Council including court decisions and legal opinions, human rights litigation materials, as well sociopolitical accounts of leading human rights advocates and key figures within Egyptian labor movement. While not all encounters have been necessarily progressive, the paper avoids the traditional assessment of the role of State Council towards enacting rights and duties, and rather assesses its development process and its relationship to the human rights movement since the inception of the canonical texts till the outbreak of the revolution. It also analyses legal and social struggles through which the human rights movement was able to open the policy space for the State Council to legislate. The paper explores how, in parallel, the movement allowed the judiciary to act as a major strategic apparatus in developing and fulfilling the state’s duty towards not just respecting, human rights from s negative law perspective, but also, gradually directing the judiciary towards positively protecting, promoting and providing rights. In essence, this constant state of negotiation allowed for the “grey area” to be stretched as particular rights become positive. It also creates a situation in which the council begins to act as law enforcement agent - in place of the prosecutor general- taking a further step towards criminal liability of human rights violators in Egypt with cases with much resonance to January 2011 calls ”‘aish hurreya, ‘adala egtemaeiyah”.