CAIRO — Egyptian judges rebelled Saturday against an edict by President Mohamed Morsi exempting his decrees from judicial review until ratification of a constitution, denouncing it as a bid for unchecked power and calling for a judges’ strike.

The condemnation came from an array of organizations. The Supreme Council of the Judiciary called the decree “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence” and urged the president to rescind it. A major association of judges, the Judges Club, called for a strike by courts across Egypt. The leader of the national lawyers’ association endorsed the call.

A judicial strike would be the steepest escalation yet in a political struggle between the country’s new Islamist leaders and the institutions of the old authoritarian government over the drafting of a new constitution. Those tensions have flared since Mr. Morsi announced his decree on Thursday, saying he acted to prevent the old-guard courts from dissolving the Constitutional Assembly, as they had dissolved an earlier assembly and the Parliament.

Mr. Morsi said his expanded powers, which he announced a day after he won international praise for helping broker a cease-fire in Gaza, would last only until the new constitution was ratified.