The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.Good faith is a well-entrenched concept in law. You act in bad faith if you argue a position you know to...
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.As a man one can’t possibly relate to the horror endured by the woman who was raped in front of her kids...
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.A polity that runs out of the ability to generate new ideas has no option but to rehash old and failed...
Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed. Photo: fileThe chief justice of Pakistan took suo-motu cognizance of the PTI regime’s response to...
On the one hand, we have the Lahore High Court’s order rejecting the bail petition for Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman. And on the other we saw a detailed...
One set of leaders employs populist rhetoric to consolidate their support base by provoking fear, anger or hate. Another has the charisma and vision...
Those who thought PM Imran Khan might suspend partisan pettifoggery in a time of a global health and economic crisis to forge national unity to...
What is Prime Minister Imran Khan’s strategy to fight the coronavirus other than relying on the miracle that our genes might somehow be less...
Outrage over the Aurat March each year flags the need to revisit John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.If you honestly engage with arguments rooted in...
With its 19 seats back in 2002, the PML-N showed more spunk in times of outright dictatorship than it does today in the face of praetorianism with a...
When Francis Fukuyama wrote his essay back in 1992, he argued that the idea of Western liberal democracy stood accepted and entrenched and while...
Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, being employed generously to scuttle protests by students and others offended by the state’s...
Well begun is half done, they say. The year 2020 has started well for some. If we thought 2019 entrenched control from behind the curtain, the...
Why would a judge open himself to such criticism at the end of a fairly reasoned opinion is a wonder.
We seek inspiration from the fact that this country was founded by a lawyer who viewed constitutionalism and the law as a source of protection for...
The Faiz Festival last week brimmed with the vigoor of our tenacious youth. The setting was perfect. Faiz’s revolutionary poetry reverberated...
In Nawaz Sharif’s case, the system as represented by the PTI regime has one concern: that NS shouldn’t die on its hands, and if he does, the...
Our zeal for a presidential system is abiding. Those who are critical of democracy for being unsuited to the ‘genius of our people’ but who also...
An Anti Terror Court letting CTD officials walk free after the Sahiwal slaughter of innocent citizens isn’t the system malfunctioning. It is the...
The PTI’s diatribe against the JUI-F dharna, and efforts to employ the law to scuttle it is certainly seeped in hypocrisy. The PAT brought to the...
According to the Justice Project: “Pakistan’s use of the death penalty is amongst the harshest in the world, accounting for 26 percent of the...
That many of us are unable to give Imran Khan due credit for his influential New York trip and his speech at the UN reflects the kind of bitter and...
The PTI regime in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa surreptitiously promulgated KP Actions Ordinance, 2019 on August 5 and is now using it to justify holding up...
Article 14 of our constitution declares citizens’ right to dignity inviolable. But much like Article 9 guaranteeing liberty, Article 14 sits...
The ceremony marking the new judicial year in September provides an opportunity to flag the achievements, regrets and aspirations of the Supreme...
Judges are public office-holders. They do not just exercise delegated authority but are also required to exhibit unfaltering commitment to...
Kashmir today manifests the tyranny of Hindu majority rule in India. When democratic structures were being designed in the West, some had warned...
The gap between the theory and practice of law is a manifestation of power relations within a polity. Our ruling power elite does not believe that...
In the backdrop of our partnership with Trump’s America, we can expect to see authoritarianism here claiming even more space and leverage to curb...
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows” — said George Orwell in ‘Nineteen...
A week ago, the PML-N made damning allegations about how certain convictions were procured from and delivered by accountability Judge Arshad Malik...
After a semester of trying to understand and debate the scheme of separation of powers in the US constitution at Harvard Law School, a fellow...
Asif Zardari has been arrested. Nawaz Sharif is serving out his jail term pending appeal hearings. NAB has arrested opposition leader Punjab...
What is at stake here is not just judicial accountability but also judicial independence. Judicial accountability isn’t about lobbing dirt in some...
With the economy in freefall and the diminishing ability of the majority of households in the country to balance their budgets and run their...
Wrestling control of Pak-Turk Schools from the Pak-Turk Education Foundation and handing them over to the Maarif Foundation should be taught as a...
We won’t allow a change in procedural or substantive law that threatens our political economy. We won’t allow any change that reduces our...
There are three issues that need to be mulled over: our narrative around corruption; our approach to competence; and our disregard for certainty.
"A judicial system which permits deliberate falsehood is doomed to fail and a society which tolerates it is destined to self-destruct."
When Georges Clemenceau claimed that, “military justice is to justice what military music is to music,” he was being unfair to military music....
The tone argument is the most flexible weapon one can employ as a bully. If you accept its logic and legitimacy, it works like a nuclear option....
It all started in March 2018 when CJP Nisar was probably contemplating his legacy and all the noble things he’d want himself remembered for. He...
We have come out ahead looking good in the fresh round of hostilities between India and Pakistan. PM Imran Khan brought his A game to the table this...
In August 1947, my Aunt Nusrat Akhtar was five years old and lived with her parents in village Mianwal in Jalandhar. Her father’s family was based...
Article 19 makes free speech and expression subject to “reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the...
For months we were told how the amended language of the MPs’ oath was a conspiracy to rob Pakistan’s Islamic identity. Anyone who tried to...
About the public gathering where Aasia Bibi allegedly confessed her sins, Justice Khosa found, “that the evidence produced by the prosecution in...
When Justice Nisar assumed office there were hopes that he would initiate judicial reforms, put his own house in order, take sustainable measures to...
Once the SC assumes the mantle of fixing everyone and everything, what suffers most is its ability to undertake self-accountability and self-reform.
