Egypt's parliament is preparing to meet in defiance of a court order that dissolved it last month, pitting President Mohamed Morsi against the Supreme Constitutional Court and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

The court rebuked newly elected Morsi on Monday, meeting in a special session to assert that the president had to abide the court's decision, which found the manner of the parliamentary election unconstitutional.

Saad el-Katatni, speaker of parliament, said lawmakers would convene at 10am on Tuesday in response to Morsi's decree, two hours earlier than their usual meeting time. But it remained unclear which MPs would join.

Katatni and Morsi are both members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which won nearly half of the parliament, and the ongoing political conflict between the military and Egypt's elected officials is seen by many liberal and secular politicians as a battle to determine the Brotherhood's post-revolution political powers.

Morsi, through his spokesman Yasser Ali, insisted his decision to reconvene the 508-seat chamber was an "assertion of the popular will".

The military, in a statement on Monday, said that it's order to dissolve parliament in June "represented the implementation" of the court's decision.

Morsi's presidential decree also calls for new parliamentary elections after a new constitution is adopted, something that is not expected before the end of the year - in effect according legitimacy to a legislature the country's highest court ruled to be invalid.

Regime loyalists

Analysts believe that the military council and state institutions still packed with old regime loyalists have attempted to constrain the Brotherhood in the months since their parliamentary gains.

In its ruling last month, the supreme court determined that a third of parliament's members were illegally elected under a law that allowed candidates from political parties to compete for seats that had been set aside for independents.

Days after the court dissolved parliament, and just minutes after polls closed in the presidential election, the military issued a unilateral package of constitutional amendments stripping the president of his role as commander in chief, asserting autonomy over their budget and affairs, and assuming the power to legislate until a new parliament could be elected.

Although the constituent assembly tasked with drawing up Egypt's new constitution is currently functioning, after being selected by the dissolved parliament, the SCAF also gave itself the power to choose a new assembly if the current one runs into any problems.

The amendments were seen as a pre-emptive attempt to limit Morsi's powers, should he win.

For the past month, the Brotherhood has argued that the court's decision was wrong and that the military, at the time the executive authority in the country, had no legal right to order parliament dissolved.

"The SCAF did not hand over power totally to the new president ... and this is the point," Yussuf Auf, a judge in the Giza governorate and constitutional scholar, said.

Auf said that Egypt's judiciary had suffered a "huge negative effect" from ruling on numerous political cases since the 2011 revolt.

"One way to solve the problem is to have the supplementary constitutional declaration amended and give the legislative powers to the [parliament] again," he said.

"If I have to choose between the legitimacy of the SCAF or the president, I have to choose the legitimacy of the president."

In its Monday statement, the military said its constitutional declaration "came as a result of the political, legal and constitutional circumstances that the country was facing".

It added that the declaration "ensures the continuity of state institutions and the [military council] until a new constitution is drafted". The military said it was "confident" that all state institutions will respect constitutional declarations.

PHOTO CAPTION

A general view of the first Egyptian parliament session after the revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, in Cairo, Egypt.

Al-Jazeera