Draw a line in the sand on January 2, 2018Judges should be above reproach and must command unparalleled respect. This does not need to be spelled out in any official text. As a Constitutional principle, it is amplified by the conduct of institutions and their actors. Does it mean the Court’s decisions and even the judges’ conduct cannot be criticised at all? Certainly not. […]
The right to be forgotten on December 27, 2017The internet has become omnipresent. It is so pervasive that its presence is hardly noticed anymore. There is a cost associated with the digitisation of the world. Every tweet we send, every post we share, the online searches we make — stay in cyberspace, adding up incrementally. Nothing we share online ever goes away. It […]
Blood in the streets on December 14, 2017“The reader of this report can easily fix the responsibility of the unfortunate Minhaj-ul-Quran incident.” This part of the Najafi report reads more like an epitaph in memory of public administration in Pakistan. For the state and the people of Pakistan, who find ways and means to rationalise everything; the Model Town bloodbath would be […]
Cleansing the Fountain on December 7, 2017A highly respected senior Justice on the Supreme Court Bench, famous for his quick wit and sharp repartee, once quipped in Court: “Counsel! The only thing that stands between your client and relief is you!”. Perhaps that remark best explains the sad state of legal affairs in our country. The single biggest hurdle in legal […]
Business as usual on November 30, 2017“In the present circumstances, I observe with great concern that District Administration not only failed to perform its duty as was required, rather from the mannerism it appears that sit-in has been facilitated to put the country in crisis…” read a scathing judgement of Islamabad High Court in the case of Syed Pervaiz Zahoor (WP […]
Separate and unequal on November 23, 2017Our Constitution recognises the significance of education. Article 25A (added by the 18th Amendment) provides: “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years…” In Article 37, the Constitution envisages, “the State shall (a) promote, with special care, the educational and economic interests of backward […]
The Long Game on November 11, 2017The 17 Member Bench of the Supreme Court in the case of District Bar Association, Rawalpindi and others rejected the challenges thrown at 18th and 21st Constitutional Amendments. Significantly though, the Court recognized the variant of basic structure to our Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Azmat Saeed wrote: “There is an inherent integrity and […]
We, the people of Pakistan… on October 31, 2017Our Constitution, according to Article 238, can only be amended by an act of Parliament. It envisages, a bill to amend the Constitution may “originate in either House” and it requires to be passed by “the votes of not less than two-thirds of the total membership of the House”, before it is transmitted to the […]
To bench and not beyond on October 26, 2017The National Judicial Policy was an ode to the ‘independence of judiciary’. It declared: “In future no chief justice or a judge of the superior court shall accept appointment as acting Governor of a province.” In addition, it stated: “No retired judge of the superior court shall accept an appointment which is lower to his […]