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The research for this book was sparked by a specific question Why did Pakistan's high courts,

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after decades of collaboration with and relative deference to the power of the military, stop asserting and expanding their authority.

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Confronting and challenging military and civilian leaders in Pakistan.

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Now, when I was in college as an undergraduate, which probably gave me a break,

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perhaps the most significant event of my memory at the time were the tumultuous events of 2005 and stuff.

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Stop that year, about eight years into the military regime of General Musharraf.

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In March, Foxtel's popular chief justice was suspended, and immediately after his suspension, Yahya mobilised around the countries of the streets,

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shutting down courts, traffic cities and dominated the news cycle as they demanded the restoration of the highly public facing chief justice.

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Now the confrontation between the ultimate regime of the time and decreasing and popular and confrontational

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Chief Justice and Supreme Court grew so dramatic that by November the regime had declared a state of emergency,

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a social movement of political parties and civil society, and galvanised around the figure of the chief justice.

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And eventually the regime itself fell. So in 2007, the march was a politically difficult and consequential event,

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that this mobilisation was all happening around the figure of the chief justice and the institution of the courts,

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and that would meet its capacity to fight the state.

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But what made it even more puzzling was it follows that judiciary had previously, historically, repeatedly upheld with multiple military coups,

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provided legal coverage of the authority after the preceding military regimes,

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and collaborated in maintaining military supremacy in Pakistan's system.

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So understanding what happened here, how do we understand that change was exactly the puzzle that I wanted to understand in my research at the time.

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And since then. And what makes it even more interesting is that since then, Foxwoods courts have not looked back.

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Instead, the judiciary continues to challenge the beleaguered advocates of the military centres of power,

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even removing two elected prime ministers from office,

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and thereby furthering the judicial teaching of politics as it pursued a pre-eminent goal in such a system.

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And the emergence of the judiciary as assertive and active central power has been the most consequential feature of the political system.

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So what we saw over the last decade is the court challenging military and civilian leaders,

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undermining authoritarianism and parliamentary democracy, shaping policy and managing governance in a way the country had never experienced before.

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And even this year, headlines in Pakistan have been dominated by daily events.

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The courts and the court that have to decide critical political questions and

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disputes that are shaping the political and democratic future of Pakistan.

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So how do we understand the emergence of this politically ambitious activist and confrontational judiciary?

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This is what I seek to understand out of examining the dramatic and consequential transformation in the rule of Pakistan's courts.

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I hope this book will also contribute to a growing literature more broadly on the sources of judicial assertiveness,

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particularly excluding under what conditions the courts muster,

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the willingness to challenge politically powerful military and especially important court competition.

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Given the number of authoritarian,

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imposed authoritarian states around the world where powerful military still dominate the politics and political trajectory of states.

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So in that presentation, I will lay out to first my broad theoretical argument before I discuss empirically the process that I observe and argue.

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I put it in Pakistan, and then I would just add also that I discussed the broader implications of my findings.

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The main argument that I put forward in the book is that the shift institution that's tilted towards

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the military in Pakistan is best explained by a change in the audiences with which I interact,

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both individually and institutionally. What do I mean by that?

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Well, thinking through the working of the judiciary as an institution,

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I argue that the judiciary converges on a set of institutional preferences in response

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to the preferences of the institution and networks with which audiences interact.

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So when I talk about preferences, what do I mean?

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I see that there are two types of institutional preferences, policy preferences and legal preferences.

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Policy preferences respond to judges preferences on the question of state action and policy making

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and legal preferences pertain to the judge's understanding of the court's goal in the legal system,

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in the political system, and the ways in which judges approach the sources of law,

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thus policy preferences about what kind of policy judges want to see at place.

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And legal preferences are about what kind of role the courts must play in the judges.

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They must stay in the political system as well.

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And so I argue that the dominant factor that could develop within judicial institutions are a product of the interactions with the audiences,

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with the judges interact. So what do I mean by audience?

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I mean, in the context of an audience developed by the political science law, it's about an audience.

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But the crux of this discussion would be political institutions, civilian political organisations, or socially professional groupings.

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They're attentive to the decisions that judges make and about which judges have reason to believe reputations.

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So why do judges care about their reputation? They don't stand for election or anything like that.

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What do reputations mean and what is very important for judges?

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But I hope that reputation building has both material and not material boxes.

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But theory judges seek to advance their careers by gaining promotions and increasing benefits, monetary or otherwise,

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and therefore they would seek to build their reputations with audiences who are in a position to influence the process of appointments,

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promotions and rewards for the judiciary. But non battery charges also seem to build our reputation as evil judges to gain the esteem of

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those so sure that professional networks are closely tied to their own esteem and satisfaction.

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The job is tied to gaining such respect. Therefore,

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it would seek to build their reputation with the groups and networks within which

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they have been socialised and which they interact with and identify with regularly,

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regularly as well.

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So the judicial interested reputation building that I'm talking about, whether for career purposes or just to build their own esteem,

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creates the opportunity for institutions that act outside the judiciary to shift institutional preferences within the judiciary.

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And I describe the concept of institutional inter linkages, which are things that external actors have to the internal processes of the judiciary,

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and that connect outside institutions to the internal structures and culture of the courts and make them particular audiences for judgements.

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And in the book, I discuss two types of intelligence. The first is what I call utilitarian linkages.

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What what I give it is that institutions, organisation or networks have a role in the appointments, promotions, probably the disciplining of judges.

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I describe this as a utilitarian linkage.

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So, for example, if the military or allied institutions have a role in the appointments, promotions and disciplining of judges, the military,

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I would argue that has a utilitarian linkage with the judiciary because it's in a position to influence

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the careers and the material trajectories and material aspects of a career and appointments and reports,

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etc. And this therefore, this utilitarian linkage allows the military to appoint,

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promote and materially benefit judges who build a reputation for making decisions in line with the preferences of the military.

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These preferences could include policy preferences regarding the political agendas of the military and legal

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preferences regarding the appropriate role for the judiciary in dealing with the military within that system.

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Secondly, the second I talk about what I call WikiLeaks linkages.

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So the socialist professional network soldiers that recruited and with which they interact with and seek to build esteem.

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I do have normative intelligence as they that the norms with which judges have to comply in order to build a reputation and to

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see the superior judiciary of any state is typically recruited from one or a combination of sections of the legal community.

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And this that's what's shaped judges perceptions of what are acceptable and unacceptable actions by judges to date.

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For example, if judges are recruited or appointed from networks of state bureaucrats that depend

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on the executive and executive support and are disconnected from civil society,

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we may be more inclined to endorse deference to executive institutions at the door.

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Thus, we must pay attention to social characteristics and legal and policy preferences

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of the sections of the legal community from which judges are recruited.

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Objective to different sections of the legal community that are tied to the military or benefit from military supremacy.

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I describe this as the military normative intellect with the judiciary.

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I didn't go with the intellect, which is me. The only judges who make decisions in line with the preferences of the military with really

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gained esteem approved military section of the legal community from which they are recruited.

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So the next judges are recruited from the authorities, that judges are recruited and promoted by board.

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Seek to ensure that their preferences are reproduced on the bench.

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I institutions embedded in these networks or acquisitions of authority over appointments.

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And that's the critical organs for the judiciary,

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which needs the judges who sincerely share or strategically endorse the audience's preferences when advancing their career and build their esteem.

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And as this process repeats itself over time.

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And more and more judges who express these preferences enter and move upward in the judicial hierarchy and give esteem and credibility as judges.

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These preferences of those audiences would become normalised within the judicial

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system and form what I call the institutional preferences of the judiciary.

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So. Now where the military and its allies constitute the dominant audiences, i.e. where they have both normative and utilitarian linkages.

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Only judges who sincerely share or strategically endorse the preferences and

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values of the military will advance their careers and enhance their esteem.

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Thus, the military is well-positioned to ensure that the legal and policy preferences underlying judicial behaviour align with the military interests.

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As a result, we could imagine the greatest loyalty to the military and those of the regime.

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What I call in this typology a noted court.

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On the other hand, with neither the military nor its affiliates are in primary control of the appointment process,

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nor at judges recruited from professional networks closely tied to the military.

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The military and the judiciary would enjoy few to no institution linkages,

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and thus the military position to shape the preferences of the judiciary are limited at best,

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and the court produced by this is unlikely to see itself as necessarily subordinate to the military,

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nor necessarily subscribe to the military ideological agenda making the likelihood of conflict and confrontation higher.

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What I call the more confrontational court, because in the book I develop, as you can see here,

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a typology of different relationships between the military and the judiciary that would shape the judiciary approach,

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jurisprudential approach to the military. This typology outlines both how different institutional arrangements shape the variation in judicial.

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The second best towards the military, right? Lawyer.

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Politician You get a sense of the fashion of the jurisprudence and how judges said preferences regarding the military may change over time.

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So as the linkages change, as the auditing of the judiciary change,

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you can imagine courts moving from one category this typology to another based on those changes.

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And that's when we come to the context of Pakistan. Right.

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So in Pakistan, I argue that experience a shift in judicial assertiveness from from collaborating with to confronting military power.

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I argue that when the audience is seated for career advancement and esteem,

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building within the judicial system shifted away from authority to networks that were closely allied with the military.

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The Pakistani judiciary shifted from a loyal court to a more ambitious constitutional court

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that was more willing to contest the military when their interests and ambitions clashed.

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And in the book I trace out the process through which the military and military related elites lost

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their important role in shaping the institutional preferences underlying conditions behaviour.

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To explain this, I carried out what I call the longest analysis of judicial behaviour towards the military in Pakistan from independence till 2020.

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And the book tells you the internal dynamics of the judiciary to shed light on how judges think about and pursue reputation building.

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And it connects the logic of reputation building with the adoption and

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institutionalisation of preferences with industry and their impact on judicial behaviour.

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But the exploration of the micro dynamics with institution institutions and their connection to broader

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processes of change in regime structure and a shift in jurisprudence required practising a range of sources.

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So this is a brief overview of the research that went into kind of the process

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tracing actual action of this of this research and what you find in this book.

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The book was based on 18 months of fieldwork in Pakistan, in which I collected quoted,

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analysed over 1000 Supreme Court and High Court judgements relevant to this question,

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conducted over 130 interviews with lawyers, judges, politicians and journalists.

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I constructed archive of newspaper articles, bar association of institutions, judges, speeches, and judicial biographies.

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And I use this evidence from these streams of data to carefully trace the process by which changes in the institutional

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environment of the judiciary and changes in its audiences impacted the transformation institutional preferences,

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which then cause variation in judicial subjects to what's the village.

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So let's go through that process, right? Let's start with what I call that at the outset, the royal Court.

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So off the box of independence, in the first 20 years,

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the Park City Judiciary really picked all the characteristics of the judiciary, the kind of boxes, both military coup.

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Soon after it boxes independence. The primary appointing authority of the judiciary was the military that executive.

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Right. Therefore, professional success was linked to pleasing the military rulers and the political and bureaucratic allies.

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Upward mobility within the superior judiciary in many ways depended upon endorsing a strong military, that executive.

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So that was the cornerstone of what we call the utilitarian intellect,

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which is that the military had the judiciary sticking it to the normative intellectuals, at least half who the judges came from.

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At this time, government services subordinate to the military.

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Exactly right. Executive branch. And the remainder came from the lawyers community in particular from the beginning to the time I was leading.

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Lawyers at the time belonged to Pakistan's post-colonial elite, educated and trained here in the United Kingdom,

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usually with strong ties to the bureaucratic and military opposite elite.

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The emotion, the same network.

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So the military regime actively sought to preserve the privileges of these networks as these boys and girls that were trained

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and socialised to reproduce the very British colonial system that institutionalised itself with the executive branch.

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So box the each at the time was appointed directly by the military regime and came from bureaucrats and post-colonial.

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It needed Lawyers Board Network to check close ties with the military elite.

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This system, I argue,

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ensured that both the key audiences for career advancement and esteem building had a real interest in promoting the military authority,

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thus constructing institutions of preferences that private collaboration with

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and deference to the military in advancing its political agenda and interest.

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I think this system anti-military, judicial activism could hardly be expected,

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particularly those who desired to be appointed or reported had to have the approval of the military elites.

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A daughter decides to build a team of judges within the legal and bureaucratic elite how to present that distant

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from from mass politics and support for the maintenance of a military dominated system of law and order.

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Thus, in this period of military and bureaucratic dominance of the political system, the judiciary,

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through its support squarely behind the military regime, while carving out the continuing role and relevance for itself.

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Now, obviously, there were moments where the judiciary also challenged the regime here and there at the time,

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but by not the fact of judicial behaviour, the overwhelming, it was one of collaboration with a deference to the military executive.

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But after independence, I discussed three processes that happened over time.

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The sequence I'm going to discuss.

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The first one is what I call the the democratic shift in the judiciary over the next few decades, particularly from the state sovereignty onwards.

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In the 1990s,

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fewer and fewer judges emerged from Pakistan's post-colonial elites as an increasing number of judges came from low key middle class backgrounds.

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The reason that I discussed in the book for this is that as the rewards for private

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commercial law increasingly outweighed the rewards for joining the judicial.

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A growing proportion of elite lawyers gravitated towards commercial law.

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So while the judiciary became more appealing to locally educated,

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middle class lawyers seeking the upward mobility and respect promised by members of the judicial elite,

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this is the changing nature of the legal profession in Pakistan and the changing rewards and

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how between the private and public sector is something I discuss in more detail in the book.

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But what this meant was that the composition of the network solely judges were primarily recruited, changed for the point educated and trained elite,

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disconnected from Barth's politics and closely aligned with the military elite to a locally educated,

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middle class network engaged with politics and less tied to future military rulers.

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And as you see here, I thought if you know out this study of percentage of Supreme Court judges who are educated abroad.

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Over time, you can see the market shift that takes place over this period.

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And what this ship did was it reduced the military's role in the network from which ideas were recruited and with which I just thought to build

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your reputation and thus the democratic ship off the judiciary meant that the judiciary was no longer embedded in that post-colonial elite,

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but increasingly in Pakistan, middle class. But the next question becomes, if these are the network with judges now, what to build their reputation?

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What are the norms and preferences of these networks?

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And that's the second point that comes to the shift in the preferences of the professional networks of judicial recruitment.

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So again, with the way I talk about the politicisation of legal community,

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so the noise community in Pakistan from where the judges were being recruited,

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became increasingly involved in the 1960s and seventies onwards, with a tumultuous political events reshaping both the political order.

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At the time these events ended, the monopoly certain elite groups had over the state politics as best society,

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including legal networks, grew increasingly aware and engaged.

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And bar associations evolve considerably now to become large associations teeming with noise from less privileged backgrounds.

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Who is more attuned to the political and socio economic concerns of the middle class communities to which they belong.

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However,

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the critical juncture that I found in my book for the Fox television community sort of political activity was the dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq.

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So what was so interesting about this period when in 1977 General Zia would have declared martial law in Pakistan and he came to power.

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And what he did was he immediately banned all political activity,

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the country banned all political parties and really suppress any venue for political activity.

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But one of the first places he allowed the resumption of any kind of political activity were professional associations such as bar association.

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Right. So suddenly Bar Association became one of the only venues in Pakistan where politics could still be legally practice.

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Right. And but what this because this suddenly makes bar association increasingly

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politically visible and relevant for politically interested activist lawyers,

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etc. Just to give you an example, when I was doing my archival research in 1977,

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when I looked at articles about the Fort Hopwood Bar Association election, there would be maybe three sentences in three and a half sentences.

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By 1980, you had these long profiles in the newspapers of the candidates for these Lawyers Bar Association election.

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Why? Simply because this was one of the only area of legitimate public political activity in town.

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So newspapers were covering it. People were talking about it. And the public profile and presence of the bar substantially increased.

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Right. So what it did was that this attracted political workers and party members to the bars and the bar.

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And that became a site for politically ambitious lawyers to start using as a

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platform to build a politics around opposing and challenging the military regime.

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Political The active voice started running for elections in the Baath,

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winning these elections and turning the bars into a platform for challenging and mobilising against the military regime.

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At the time, I did in this period, an increasing norm.

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Developments regarding the Baath Party to assert the independence of the military.

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And I challenged the military as well.

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And in the absence of these political venues and a norm of anti militarism and political activism was increasingly entrenched in the bar.

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Now, with the end of military rule in 1980 1980s and the coming of Democratic and Democratic through the 1990s,

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this political activism was translated into a broader agenda of socio economic and

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political reform that the lawyers believed was to be realised that they needed to realise.

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And indeed, consensus seemed to establish itself within the bar, and the focus of this activities was often a moving target shifting between generals,

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bureaucrats or politicians who the parties loyal supporters corrupted, incompetent and incapable of shaping the political direction of the state.

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It's really interesting when you study or read the Bar Association resolution of the 1990s.

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You have bars of talk in all matters of affairs, whether it has to do with foreign policy, local policy.

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I think that could Sindhi could be wrote a letter or the report wrote a letter to the

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United Nations Security Council demanding a different solution to the Iraq crisis.

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So it's really good that they thought that they could do that. But that shows you the kind of political efficacy they believe that they have.

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Right. On another note, you had one of the leaders of the Bar Association in Baluchistan of the political stunt jump into a cage at the zoo of cage,

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of lions in the zoo to protest political corruption.

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Right. Do you really have any ambitious lawyers really wanted to make their impact on the politics of the Thai political

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system and then by both the military and the politicians were ill equipped to really deal with these challenges.

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And instead, what they wanted to see was their institution, which was the judiciary, really step up and become an activist,

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interventionist institution and to set the country on the path that being what it should be.

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All right.

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And so by the 1990, this consensus of political and judicial activism was entrenched through the Bar Association in the major of its sentence.

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So that's it. Now the norms in the networks to which judges are recruited and which they're seeking to build their reputations.

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The third point that I make is, and you can see here this quote from one of the leading volunteers at the time.

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He wants the courts to take action in the event pertaining to political corruption

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to see if the system do you know this deep beneath this political culture,

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which I think was corrupt and the court need to challenge this, but it's going to hold them accountable and transform the political system.

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This is really way to see the political agenda of these lawyers. Theodore is heading that.

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Now. So now I didn't you to the charity clinic right now.

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The third part of the story is the separation of the judiciary from the executive.

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The Constitution of 1973 in Pakistan, it established the principle that the judiciary and the executive have to be separate.

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Right. And then in 1996, an important Supreme Court decision,

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the Supreme Court significantly reduced the executive branch's discretion in appointments and

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by giving the chief justices privacy and the primacy in judicial appointments at the time.

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And in 2000, it did the court further reduced executive control with the establishment of the Judicial Commission to manage executive appointments.

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What is that now? Within the past, the judicial selection in Pakistan did not necessarily require establishing a reputation with the executive branch.

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And it does diminish the role of executive institutions in career advancement.

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Secondly, what this meant was that I had the voice and role of the executive branch diminished in the course of appointments,

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while the role of the Chief Justice's comedy roles. For me the goal of the bar increase in appointments as well.

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These judges, the chief justice, is controlling the appointment process now when lawyers always themselves are being increasingly consulted with

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and relied on the advice of their fellow lawyers from their respective go folks advice in making appointments.

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Thus alongside reputation with Chief Justice's reputation within the noise community become an

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increasingly important consideration in the process of judicial appointments and promotions.

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As you can see, this Court, from what one judge was telling me, the reputation of the bar is very important.

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You cannot hide your activities in the bar.

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Problems can be created for unwanted judicial appointments. Whisper campaigns.

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I've seen this happen at the shop.

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He was talking about how important and how consequential in forming your reputation within the bar was to your future and your credibility as a judge.

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Not just your popularity, not just your standing and your reputation within the bar because of your career as well.

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What this meant was that by the late 1990, the institution environment of the judiciary had to be completely rearranged.

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And he ordered this, and judicial preferences had been largely altered as a consequence of these processes.

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In particular, the and as I summarised here,

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the set of these are the three processes I'm talking about of the military as the primary executive institution and affiliated elites,

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but of pre-eminence in the judicial appointments system while the judges advantages become consequential audiences.

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And secondly, judicial recruitment shifted from a section of the legal complex community that was more aligned to the military,

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to one that did more independent from issues opposition to the bench.

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Thus, a new consensus emerged within the judiciary at the time for greater activism,

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greater political ambition and greater participation of military and civilian centres of power to which I will come to not.

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This is broadly the process that I traced out in the book. I think it's made it necessary, but is largely what I was just talking about.

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And I can discuss it, by the way. So, yes, so this brings us to the period in which we call the period of the confrontational court.

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Right. Of what happened was that what was happening now without added the sea changes that happened and increasingly going is pushing for

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judges to demonstrate their independence from other studies and to intervene in the policy of politics of other state institutions.

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And as the judiciary grew more visible in resolving disputes between state institutions and also the growth of public interest,

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litigation in Pakistan reduced the procedural and jurisdiction restrictions on judicial interventions,

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lawyers, exports to expand their role in governance.

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And we saw a growing number of petitions in the late 1990 from lawyers demanding

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a more interventionist role by courts and party that making such claims.

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And we saw judges receptive to and supportive of such an approach as well.

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And the impact became very clear in the sort of activist, interventionist approach that emerged in the 2000.

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What I should add, added this is to that by choice the only institution related issues with the judiciary were first the military and then the bar.

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Political parties also sought to establish close linkages with the judiciary at different times.

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But the story of the key tradition that I think best explains the changing approach of the judiciary

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at the time is the diminishing role of the military and increasing rule of the bar as well.

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But I'm happy to talk about the political parties facing all this in the Q&A as well.

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But yes, talking about the Constitution, Constitutional Court, as I call it,

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becomes most evident during the tenure of Chief Justice IFTIKHAR Chaudhry in 2005 and the Chief Justice Chaudhry Fox,

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who saw an explosive growth in what is called public interest education.

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Chaudhry Justice Chaudhry set up reactivating the human rights set of the court,

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which received numerous petitions about human rights violations and converted these into formal petitions for the court to hear.

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The court also took up an increasing number of cases suo motu.

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That's my goodness. Law, 2 minutes away. If it did that,

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it did tell me that an issue was one of significant public importance and raise the question of the enforcement of fundamental rights that

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the court reduced procedural and jurisdiction restrictions to take notice of a broad important number of the bits of and add to the court.

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And that's I think you have to support it, which means even in the absence of a petitioner,

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if the court, for example, saw a story in the media or a judge, so to read the media,

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the data concerning they take it out, start hearing in the court and make a case out of this,

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created a feedback loop between the media and the judiciary, right?

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So as the court take, the media would discuss the issue.

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Court would take it up, the media would cover the courts taking up those issues.

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And it made the job increasingly more public. And the fifth biggest opposed the litigation was was restricted to more small scale issues.

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But clearly that changed the court to more ambition. Here are two examples.

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The Court You look at separation and advance governance.

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So first the I talk about the privatisation of toxins.

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What the most famous case in this got with box of privatisation of a lot of state owned steel mills, which was challenged in the courts at the time.

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Right now, the petition before the court claimed that the steel mills assets was sold for a price lower than the value.

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I asked the court to review the privatisation process,

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but the proceedings of the case to the Court overturned the entire privatisation of those massive

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steel mills for significantly impacting the military regime of the time of economic plans.

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But the proceedings of the case also shed light on the consulted priorities of the judges.

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So justice for observed in the judgement that although the Court has not permitted policies,

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it had a mandate to adjudicate as to whether the privatisation policies were in the national interest.

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The Court was therefore placing itself in a position to ascertain what was in the national interest or not.

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The other judge Justice put the voice the court's policy preferences seeking that he was simply opposed to privatisation

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because entities having of strategic importance cannot be sold to foreign investors who are just opposed to privatisation.

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So he was going to overturn it on that record.

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So what you really see is what becomes the is how these quotes get comfortable weighing in into being a major question of policy,

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articulating their preferences regarding policy, and claiming authority to determine what was and what is not in the national interest.

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I spoke about another case where the other case with the judicial system of the important sacred with

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the court states that the judiciary was obliged to act as the administrator of the public will.

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Right. So you really have this emergence in the court, this idea that it was best position to it's only the public will decide the public interest

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and show you that impact policy and governance and government in Pakistan based on this.

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Right now the power during this time during which you had grown more worried

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about judicial appointments and the conduct of judges and bar associations,

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condemned judges who collaborated with the judges and even released a white paper on the judiciary which

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caused a name and shame judges who had bad reputations and discussed corruption amongst these judges as well.

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I was leading noise coming from the bar like Justice Jose.

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What conscious about the reputation within these groups? Leading lawyers who had made these judges that would help these judges get appointed.

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Now, the judges indicated that I expected them to make decisions in light of the preferences.

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Judges who also more concerned about, as became increasingly public figures about how their reputations were projected to the public.

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And very often it was lawyers coming on TV channels talking about their judgements and shaping those reputations in the public.

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As one judge told me, the bar was the loudspeaker of the judges.

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And the third reason lawyers really cared about their reputation also at this time was the mobilisation potential of the lawyers.

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So in 2007, when General Justice Chaudhry was suspended by General Musharraf,

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noise around the country actively mobilised and supported the judges who decided to defy the regime.

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The events of the lawyers which showed the body that had the capacity to mobilise the bar and this mobilisation potentially on full display.

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But there were thousands of lawyers in ballrooms around the country with few cases and few opportunities and very little to do.

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And there were always ready made footsoldiers for bodyguards to call out on the streets day after day,

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protesting and challenging the regime, challenging the regime at the time.

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And that really that mobilisation could be especially consequential at that point.

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And even after the events of 2078, this dynamic is beginning to cease.

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All the lawyers, movement lawyers continue to rely on the mobilisation potential to pressure and control the judges and

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frequently resorted to it and aggressive tactics against judges and other rival groups of lawyers,

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especially thus we see the bars willingness and ability to pressure judges has grown significantly.

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Judges who pursued the agenda of the bar were actively supported by the bar, and judges who felt out of line became the targets.

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And this these three key aspects come together to form the Iraqi court competition court, a judiciary that was unwilling to accept the community,

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collaborated in appalling and I think,

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institution supremacy and was focus on establishing its own role as an independent power centre and should be the policy politics of the state.

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But importantly, though, why this explains the emergence of a more ambitious, assertive and competition judiciary.

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This is not me. The judiciary became more democratic.

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Yes, it challenged military institutions, but it also sought to confront and constrain civilian institutions as well.

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And I also show how, in the decades since the military regime in 2008, 2018,

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the institution very institution property that motivated the court to confront the military,

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also drove it to challenge it either by force authoritarian elected governments with mixed consequences for the democratic future.

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50,000 dead. The courts increasingly intervene at every mark of governance and in doing so frequently overturn decisions made by political branches,

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undermine the report, overrule the policies,

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and justify these actions based on critiques of the corruption and incompetence of the political branches.

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There's no doubt that the longstanding practices of corruption and maladministration needed to be come back.

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However, the way the court went about these interventions frequently meant the judiciary was supplanting the

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authority of the other branches of government and limiting and de-legitimize the electoral supremacy.

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Perhaps this verdict by the court against. At that time,

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the Prime Minister that ousted the varsity really exemplifies the way the courts were thinking about their rule at the time with the judiciary by

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the decision where the ousted nwaoboshi from power and indeed placed a nightgown on him standing as premier on the breaches of civil charges.

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Right. This by the court could now put individuals from political office and political life on the beat without even a criminal conviction.

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Right. And the court justified doing that by making the statement that the court had the power to, quote unquote,

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cleanse the fountainhead of the authority of the state so that the trickle down authority may also become unpolluted.

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That's the court decree. So itself has having the vision to purify the state of politics of Pakistan.

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And so this opposition to both military and political party dominance shaped the judge's repeated interventions into the regime structure,

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electoral processes and policy making up the state of the political system.

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As one politician debated, what can we do when all these judges all think they are beside us now?

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All come to save the people? And thus, I guess, a constitutional court, I argue, is not necessarily a pro-democracy court,

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because these very decisions weaken electoral institutions and eventually help engineer the political landscape in

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Pakistan to make to permit the military to return to a prominent political role in boxes politics after 2000 of instead,

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the aspiration for pre-eminent role managing state institutions and governance can both undermine both the authority regimes,

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but also weaken and paralyse elected civilian governments so that you can sort of a in the book,

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I would argue the change in judicial organs is crucial for expanding the judiciary, collaborating with the people, fighting military governance.

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But this is not to dismiss the relevance of other factors that contributed as well, including the political structure of the state,

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the waxing and waning of military power, or alternatively,

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individual chief justice is a dead belief that action all of these is bad in a different time.

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But I believe this story of shifting judicial power ambition can only best be

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told if we understand the role of audiences in shaping the judicial trajectory.

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And I believe this project provided some lessons for the study of judicial politics.

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More broadly,

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it reveals how politically powerful militaries shape the willingness and ability of the judiciary to assert civilian control over the military.

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It highlights the role of the legal community in shaping judicial behaviour,

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and it shows that judges are motivated by both material and opportunities, goals.

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And finally, this book contributes to this dialogue about new judicial conception and the judicial ization of politics.

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By explaining how fast the judiciary shifted from the commitment to upholding the procedural requirements of a colonial

401
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era legal framework designed to uphold the executive power to the commitment to champion its own judicial rights.

402
00:39:36,930 --> 00:39:40,300
Conception of the public interest. Thank you. I keep it that.