THE argument is subject to change. In Pakistan in the recent past, the position has changed far too frequently for far too many people to keep track of. Yet some perceived changes generate controversy and it is made out as if one group of experts has hegemony over the clinching argument. Case closed.

We have had a constitution for a while, have a penal code and are as likely to take legal recourse as anyone else. But in the past it has never been so monotonously black and white. The lawyers today rival the status quo economist as the authority whose logic cannot be argued with. No other group with vested interest in the matter is deemed to have a case and in fact clever are those politicians who are willing to join the dominant chorus.

Against the principle of continuing argument, all challengers to the norm, from within the ranks and outsiders, are met with a stern reprimand which can in time degenerate into ironic boos and an eventual labelling of the dissenter as a traitor. The process that identifies renegades culminates in separating the always-right from the inherently wrong. The lawyers have been found asserting themselves in politics much beyond their original brief, which is not rare. The coming together of the lawyers on the street for a common cause — trade unionism or people’s rights — is also not new.

But as the intensity of their effort has increased the legal minds trained to pick up the nuances have been found displaying impatience and a tendency to play the jury that has often been compared with the arrogance that comes with victory.

The vanquished have no voice, when, much before the court has adjudicated and ruled, those who claim to know the law best have decided the case, in their own favour.

So much so, that the lawyers’ partner in the campaign for a free judiciary — the media — has time and again been constrained to report on the excesses committed by the lawyers: against the unyielding revenue clerks in Faisalabad, against the self-righteous police in Lahore and against Wapda employees in Kasur, to cite only three instances on a rather long list of instances of summary trials conducted by over-eager members of the bar.

This is the less disturbing side to the rise and rise story of our times. There are other, even more serious, manifestations of a dangerous presence of a righteous attitude among lawyers that is quite often linked to their historical triumphs against one stubborn general and a few wayward politicians.

The one that strikes at the basic rights the lawyers should otherwise be keen to defend relates to a client’s choice of its representative in a court of law.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but to a layman this right of the client is supreme. It is even more important than a lawyer exercising the freedoms his profession gives him to represent an accused before a judge, whatever conclusion the honourable court may eventually arrive at.

People have in the past shown a better understanding of this principle which makes the lawyers relevant above and over a police force that is ever so keen to announce and carry out its verdict against those it finds guilty of crime. Remove this principle, and you make lawyers and the courts irrelevant. Going by the logic that is being applied to Aitzaz Ahsan now, a Nawaz Sharif will be without the lawyer of his choice to represent him in a case against his dismissal from power.

The current argument appears to more than imply that there is nothing wrong in denying an accused the services of a lawyer who the accused thinks can best represent him in the court. Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has suddenly lost credit with the followers he had led through the lawyers’ movement because he has decided to stand for Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in court.

Mr Gilani’s counsel has been summarily asked to confess his own little crime: he must admit that he is guilty of changing his argument before he proceeds to represent his client professionally. Now who said that it was the prime minister who was on trial here?

Leave aside the matter whether Aitzaz’s defence of the prime minister amounts to a U-turn on his part or not, the question is: does the government have the right to appoint a competent lawyer to fight on its behalf or not?

The power in the onslaught against Aitzaz, who was everyone’s favourite legal expert until the other day, is dizzying.

In a couple of conversations in Lahore last week he was dismissed as an agent of a political party who was lurking around, waiting for an opportune moment to launch his career as a vicious fifth-columnist. And as the barrister seeks the benefit of doubt from his own colleagues at the bar, the tirade against him shows no signs of ebbing.

Obviously, an argument is shaped by the objective a set of people has in mind. For someone still committed to an efficient working relationship with various institutions, Aitzaz Ahsan would appear to be well suited to help in the adjudication process here.

He is a seasoned politician belonging to a party which has a history to show for all its concerns about the judiciary; concerns which need to be addressed not only in the name of fairness to a party, but also for establishing a formula that can rule out or at least minimise the chances of a group accusing a judge or more of having bias towards it.

Aitzaz is a senior lawyer who has stood by his colleagues in the bar while some other stalwarts of the lawyers’ movement had thought it wise to distance themselves from the pack.

This affinity with the political and the legal should have actually facilitated a search for a respectable sharing of powers between institutions — in case this is the purpose of the exercise. Objectives other than this would make the argument irrelevant.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.