Jinnah's preference for a federal court with narrow, constitution-specific jurisdiction was born out of political necessity, not constitutional philosophy.
Eighteen years after the lawyers’ movement, when three friends and colleagues, bound by a shared belief in the Constitution, were tested once more, only two remained true to that promise.
The fight against the 26th and 27th Amendments is a fight for every Pakistani’s right to justice. It is not a fight to protect the judiciary for its own sake.
The encroachers are the same as they were in 2007; more brazen now because their handmaidens all recognise that the sell-out date on their popularity has long passed.
The main focus of the 26th and 27th amendments — for all the wide-ranging havoc they have brought and will bring to the judiciary — leaves 98pc of cases and 98pc of the litigant public untouched.
Says there was no justification in giving relief to the PTI under Article 187, especially when appeals were filed and pursued by the Sunni Ittehad Council.
When Justice Munir denied the existence of the assembly’s sovereignty, he destroyed the country’s existing constitutional basis. Sovereign power in Pakistan would become a prize, to be seized by the strongest.
In pleas filed in SC, five IHC judges regret that CJ Dogar has "transformed the office of chief justice into an autocracy, in an effort to reduce the judiciary to a regiment".
After this latest verdict, the Constitutional Bench has served that Constitution on a platter to the rejected parties: they can now reshape our legal order all by themselves.
Allowing military courts to pronounce decisions, albeit conditionally, raises renewed concerns about the judiciary's independence after the 26th Constitutional Amendment, says lawyer Mirza Moiz Baig.
To be fair to Justice Isa, he showed tremendous courage in checking the powerful — if power can be taken to mean retired judges, dead generals, and Monal Restaurant.
The Parliament cannot take away the judicial power to interpret the Constitution from the apex court and vest it in, what is effectively, a body subordinate to the government.
The path to a more transparent Pakistan is illuminated by judgments such as this, promising a future in which the nation's affairs are open to scrutiny, and public trust is fortified.
The record of protection of privacy rights in Pakistan is extremely poor, perhaps one of the poorest in the world, which is all the more reason for the exclusionary rule to be adopted.
