Rule of law a must for growth of state and society: CJP

KARACHI: The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, on Friday stressed the need for supporting a culture of the rule of law as a pre-requisite for the development and growth of the state and society.
Addressing as the chief guest at an international conference on legal education organised by the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto University of Law here at a hotel, the chief justice said that lack of awareness of law and legal education was the main cause of the weak rule of law in the country.
“We need to introduce basic legal education much earlier in our school curricula so that citizens are better informed about how best to engage with the state, assert their rights and claim their entitlements,” the chief justice said, adding that it will serve to create a more constructive relationship between the state and society.
He emphasized the need for popularising the law so that the people have access to law and legal thinking affecting their lives. He said that unjust state and societies are inherently unstable and cannot sustain in the long run.
The chief justice said that the Constitution of Pakistan guaranteed the pre-eminence of justice when it states that freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed, and state shall guarantee fundamental rights, including equality of status of opportunity and before law social, economic and political justice wherein the judiciary shall be fully secured and the state shall be based on the Islamic principles of social justice.
He said that ensuring the dispensation of justice was a constitutional as well as a civic and religio-moral obligation of the state, its functionaries and society.
He said that the legal profession was endowed with the task of discharging a very onerous responsibility that required a high degree of personal and professional trust, integrity and competence to provide an effective rule of law that timely responds to the citizens’ sense of justice and fairness.
He dispelled the impression that legal education was solely for the lawyers and for those engaged in law-related professions but said that it was relevant and necessary for some other fields such as accountancy, management, health and safety, bureaucracy and other related professions.
He said a certain level of legal education and awareness was necessary for the people to effectively engage with the state, their business and other citizens.
However, he said due to the lack of public awareness about the law, the state and its organs such as the judiciary and the executive must proactively assume the responsibility for legal empowerment, reaching out to the people and countering legal exclusion.
The chief justice emphasized the need for hastening the process and revamping the curriculum in order to align it with the requirements of the twenty-first century.
He said that besides improving the course contents, the teaching of the law also needed to be revolutionised, and this objective could be achieved through the induction of bright people as faculty members who are not only academics and researchers but also practitioners of law.
The chief justice said that our state and society had been facing the challenges of globalisation, and it was necessary that we continued to invest in enhancing skills and knowledge to cope with this transitioning world.
He said that local experts should be encouraged for enhancing the professional expertise in different sectors instead of hiring foreign experts on higher salaries and remunerations.
The chief justice suggested that the Higher Education Commission, the Pakistan Bar Council and the universities and law schools needed to develop fast-track means to bridge the chronic capacity gaps that were adversely affecting the quality of our rule of law and dispensation of justice.
Besides, he said that the HEC should consider developing modular law programmes enabling local law universities and schools to develop specialisation and allow students to study in different universities within Pakistan in line with their preferences.
He said that exchange programmes should also be considered for students, teachers and professionals with overseas universities and law schools on the pattern of the European Union’s Eramus programme as it will enhance learning opportunities and promote understanding and integration amongst states and societies.
The CJP also pointed out that numerous reports were highlighting that outdated and weak quality of training and technical capacity were the key reasons for the weak rule of the law and dispensation of justice and stressed the need to address such issues by adopting competency-based frameworks that focus on improving knowledge, skills and attitudes. He also stressed the need for civil service reforms so that competence and capabilities were given priority instead of seniority as whenever seniority was preferred over competence, it created a perverse incentive that hindered performances.
Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan said that legal education in the country needed to be reorganised on modern lines to make it responsive to the new social, educational, political and economic changes.
The Vice Chancellor of SZABUL, Dr Justice (retd) Qazi Khalid Ali, said that many law commission reports had emphasized from time to time that access to justice cannot be improved without substantial improvements in the quality of the legal education. He said that in view of the recommendations of the Supreme Court and with the emerging trends in legal education, it had become necessary to develop a law university in Pakistan which imparted legal education at par with the leading universities of the world.