• In letter to SJC, Justices Mansoor Ali Shah and Munib Akhtar say new rules are inconsistent with Constitution, dilute judicial independence
• Suggest proposed changes be put on hold till decision on 26th Amendment
• Letter rues new code elevates CJP from ‘first among equal to a quasi-executive supervisor’
ISLAMABAD: In a sharply worded letter, two senior Supreme Court judges, who also serve on the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), have described the recent amendments to the code of conduct for judges as an attempt to dilute judicial independence, suppress transparency, and centralise control in a manner inconsistent with both the Constitution and the international standards.
Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Munib Akhtar, in an 11-page letter to the chairman and other members of the SJC, regretted that recent additions to the code of conduct were perilous because they can be weaponised against individual judges — their breadth and vagueness allowing selective application to silence inconvenient or dissenting voices within the bench. These proposed amendments transform the judiciary from a collegial constitutional body into a bureaucratically managed institution, the letter regretted.
On Oct 18, the SJC had approved far-reaching amendments to the code of conduct for judges requiring a superior court judge not to engage in any public controversy, whether by speech, writing, debate or comment at any forum and least of all on political questions, even if such questions involve a question of law.
Now, through the letter, both judges asked the SJC members to consider deferring the proposed amendments until the 26th Amendment was decided by the Constitutional Bench and the constitutional legitimacy of SJC’s composition was settled.
The letter also asked the members that no amendment to the code of conduct could be adopted without a full-court consultation and a broad-based, collegial process engaging all judges of the Supreme Court and the high courts, whose independence the code seeks to safeguard.
Moreover, the comparative material from the Bangalore Principles (2002), the UN Basic Principles (1985), and other democratic jurisdictions should be circulated and debated to ensure that any reform strengthens, rather than constrains, judicial independence.
Equally troubling, the letter regretted, was that the recent amendments to the code was the fanciful assumption underlying Article XIX: that the Chie Justice of Pakistan (CJP) was immune from influence and institutionally capable of resisting pressure once it was reported to that office.
Experience shows that when the institution itself is under strain especially in the aftermath of the 26th Constitutional Amendment, such concentration of authority makes the system more fragile, and not stronger, the letter said.
The judicial independence cannot rest on the perceived virtue or courage of one person; it must be distributed, not centralised, the letter emphasised.
The letter also suggested that the proposed amendment in the shape of Article V, the insertion of Article XIV, and the incorporation of the 2003 resolutions into the code of conduct be rejected. It also requested that it should be read into the record of the meeting and annexed in full to the minutes.
It regretted that since the CJP himself, on his own accord, placed the matter of the code of conduct before the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee (NJPMC) a day before the meeting of the SJC, thereby opening it to discussion and its resolution among all CJs of the high courts and subsequently issued a public press release regarding that meeting. Therefore it becomes all the more necessary that our objections and observations on the proposed amendments be similarly shared with all judges of the constitutional courts.
The code is not the charter of a few but the ethical foundation for every judge of the superior judiciary, the letter said, emphasising that it was imperative that all members of the court be fully informed of the issues surrounding its proposed amendment.
The code must embody the collective and considered judicial conscience of the institution, not the preferences or perceptions of a limited few. While we are dispatching copies of this letter to the members and the secretary of the SJC, we are also sharing the same with all judges of the SC.
The letter regretted that the proposed changes to the code elevate the CJ from first among equal to a quasi-executive supervisor, thereby centralising power and weakening horizontal accountability. The overall effect is to create dependency, discourage openness and produce conformity conditions antithetical to judicial independence.
Such provisions belong to an era of control, not constitutionalism and their reincorporation, when democracy is fragile and executive influence strong, would suffocate the judiciary’s ability to act as a constitutional check on power.
Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2025