Two judges quit as amendment ‘hollows out’ SC
• Justices Shah, Minallah hang up robes, call changes ‘assault on Constitution’
• Justice Shah says amendment makes justice ‘more distant, more vulnerable to power’
• Justice Minallah regrets Constitution he swore to uphold is ‘no more’
• CJP convenes full court to examine amendment after another judge writes letter
ISLAMABAD: Moments after the 27th Amendment came into effect, senior puisne judge Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Athar Minallah hung up their robes, describing the legislation as an affront to the judiciary and the 1973 Constitution. More resignations are expected to follow.
“I therefore resign as the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in full awareness of the reasons that compel it and in loyalty to the Constitution that has guided every step of my judicial life,” Justice Shah wrote in his 13-page resignation letter, issued in both English and Urdu. The letters have been addressed to President Asif Ali Zardari.
Justice Shah described the amendment as a “grave assault on the Constitution” and said the 27th Amendment dismantled the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugated the judiciary to executive control and struck at the “very heart of our constitutional democracy”.
The amendment, he said, has made justice “more distant, more fragile and more vulnerable to power.”
Justice Minallah, in his resignation letter, regretted that the Constitution he had sworn to uphold and defend was “no more”.
“Much as I have tried to convince myself otherwise, I can think of no greater assault on its memory than to pretend that as new foundations are now laid, they rest upon anything other than its grave,” he bemoaned.
Both judges had recently written to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Yahya Afridi, requesting a full court meeting to consider the amendment.
Senior counsel Makhdoom Ali Khan, who had been appointed by the chief justice as a member of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP), also resigned from the position.
‘No constitutional logic’
In a hard-hitting letter, Justice Shah said the amendment had fractured the unity of the nation’s apex court, crippled judicial independence and integrity and pushed the country back by decades. “As history bears witness, such a disfigurement of the constitutional order is unsustainable and will in time be reversed — but not before leaving deep institutional scars,” he noted.
Justice Shah stressed that the 27th Amendment was enacted by a government, and endorsed by the current leadership of the Supreme Court, while their own legitimacy remained under serious constitutional challenge. “At a moment when the dignity and independence of the court demanded principled resistance, the incumbent chief justice offered none,” Justice Shah regretted. “Instead of defending the institution he (the chief justice) was entrusted to lead, he assented to the amendment and negotiated only the preservation of his own position and title, even as the court’s constitutional stature was being dismantled.”
“When the head of the judiciary chooses personal continuity over institutional integrity — especially while one’s own legitimacy is under judicial scrutiny — the result is not leadership, but abdication,” he said. Justice Shah insisted that the 27th Amendment had no “constitutional logic, no legal necessity and no jurisprudential foundation”.
The amendment “was enacted without debate, without consultation and without seeking the considered input of the judiciary it seeks to remake. Its only discernible purpose is to place the judiciary under executive influence, allowing those in power to curate, control and manufacture a constitutional court of their own choosing, while leaving behind a Supreme Court reduced to a mere appellate tribunal — stripped of constitutional jurisdiction and incapable of addressing state excesses or violations of fundamental rights”, Justice Shah said.
“I feel deep sorrow for the judges who will now be made part of the new Federal Constitutional Court and will sit in a court created not by constitutional wisdom, but by political expediency,” Justice Shah regretted.
“It captures the judiciary, hollows out the Supreme Court and replaces constitutional adjudication with a court shaped by power, not by principle,” he added.
‘More than ornaments’
Justice Minallah, in his letter, recalled that 11 years ago he took the oath of office as a judge of the Islamabad High Court and, four years later, became its chief justice. Another four years on, he took the oath as a judge of the Supreme Court. Across this period of more than a decade “in these robes”, and across all those oaths, the solemn promise he made was fundamentally the same.
“It was not an oath to a constitution; it was an oath to the Constitution,” he said, adding that prior to the passage of the 27th Amendment, he wrote to the chief justice, expressing concern over what its proposed features meant for the constitutional order.
Justice Minallah said the robes judges wear are “more than mere ornaments”. They are meant to serve as a reminder of “that most noble trust bestowed upon those fortunate enough to don them”.
Instead, he wrote, throughout the country’s history they have too often stood as symbols of “betrayal through silence and complicity alike”. If future generations are to see them differently, “then our future cannot be a repeat of our past,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, senior counsel Makhdoom Ali Khan said in his resignation letter as LJCP member that he had accepted the position “without a second thought” when the chief justice sought his consent.
By then, he noted, the Constitution had been amended for the 26th time. He wrote that he could see “despondence on the once shining faces of promising young lawyers”. He said the 27th Amendment had sunk the ship and had scuttled “whatever was left of an independent judiciary”.
That being so, he wrote, he could not continue to be a member of an institution “erected on the promise to reform the law”, adding that no law reform was possible or effective without an independent judiciary.
“To continue in these circumstances would be to perpetuate the worst fraud possible, a fraud on oneself,” he wrote.
CJP convenes full court
Meanwhile, responding to a series of letters from Supreme Court judges, CJP Yahya Afridi convened an emergent full court meeting on Friday after Justice Salahuddin Panhwar became the third judge to urge him to call a judges’ conclave to deliberate on the 27th Amendment and discharge their “solemn duty” to the Constitution.
Headed by the CJP, the full court will meet at the Supreme Court building before Friday prayers.
On Thursday, Justice Panhwar, in a two-page letter, requested the CJP to summon the full court to examine the amendment clause by clause and study its implications against Articles 175, 175A, 189, 190, 191 and 209 of the Constitution — provisions that deal with the judiciary.
“From what has been foreshadowed, this amendment may unsettle the careful balance that the framers intended,” Justice Panhwar cautioned, adding that it may touch upon the security of tenure, composition of benches, appointment and removal of judges, and even the financial and administrative autonomy of the courts.
“Let us test each provision of the amendment by a single question: does it strengthen the independence of the judiciary, or diminish it?” Justice Panhwar proposed, stating that if judicial independence appeared to be diminished, “then we judges must say so, not in anger but in truth”.
He also suggested commissioning a technical brief through the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan Secretariat and, if needed, engaging the National Judicial (Policymaking) Committee.
He said the Supreme Court should also confer with the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) — the apex representative body of lawyers — as well as the provincial bar councils, since “the bar and the bench are twin guardians of justice”. Justice Panhwar also urged that the court prepare, should litigation ensue, to preserve its capacity under Article 190 of the Constitution (which mandates that all executive and judicial authorities throughout Pakistan act in aid of the Supreme Court) to ensure that its commands are not rendered “hollow”.
Meanwhile, lawyer Asad Rahim Khan moved a petition before the Supreme Court seeking a declaration that, in the presence of Entry 55 of the Federal Legislative List, the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, as provided in the original Constitution of 1973, cannot be abridged or abolished through an act of parliament.
Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2025