The research for this book was sparked by a specific question Why did Pakistan's high courts,
after decades of collaboration with and relative deference to the power of the military, stop asserting and expanding their authority.
Confronting and challenging military and civilian leaders in Pakistan.
Now, when I was in college as an undergraduate, which probably gave me a break,
perhaps the most significant event of my memory at the time were the tumultuous events of 2005 and stuff.
Stop that year, about eight years into the military regime of General Musharraf.
In March, Foxtel's popular chief justice was suspended, and immediately after his suspension, Yahya mobilised around the countries of the streets,
shutting down courts, traffic cities and dominated the news cycle as they demanded the restoration of the highly public facing chief justice.
Now the confrontation between the ultimate regime of the time and decreasing and popular and confrontational
Chief Justice and Supreme Court grew so dramatic that by November the regime had declared a state of emergency,
a social movement of political parties and civil society, and galvanised around the figure of the chief justice.
And eventually the regime itself fell. So in 2007, the march was a politically difficult and consequential event,
that this mobilisation was all happening around the figure of the chief justice and the institution of the courts,
and that would meet its capacity to fight the state.
But what made it even more puzzling was it follows that judiciary had previously, historically, repeatedly upheld with multiple military coups,
provided legal coverage of the authority after the preceding military regimes,
and collaborated in maintaining military supremacy in Pakistan's system.
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.
And since then. And what makes it even more interesting is that since then, Foxwoods courts have not looked back.
Instead, the judiciary continues to challenge the beleaguered advocates of the military centres of power,
even removing two elected prime ministers from office,
and thereby furthering the judicial teaching of politics as it pursued a pre-eminent goal in such a system.
And the emergence of the judiciary as assertive and active central power has been the most consequential feature of the political system.
So what we saw over the last decade is the court challenging military and civilian leaders,
undermining authoritarianism and parliamentary democracy, shaping policy and managing governance in a way the country had never experienced before.
And even this year, headlines in Pakistan have been dominated by daily events.
The courts and the court that have to decide critical political questions and
disputes that are shaping the political and democratic future of Pakistan.
So how do we understand the emergence of this politically ambitious activist and confrontational judiciary?
This is what I seek to understand out of examining the dramatic and consequential transformation in the rule of Pakistan's courts.
I hope this book will also contribute to a growing literature more broadly on the sources of judicial assertiveness,
particularly excluding under what conditions the courts muster,
the willingness to challenge politically powerful military and especially important court competition.
Given the number of authoritarian,
imposed authoritarian states around the world where powerful military still dominate the politics and political trajectory of states.
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.
I put it in Pakistan, and then I would just add also that I discussed the broader implications of my findings.
The main argument that I put forward in the book is that the shift institution that's tilted towards
the military in Pakistan is best explained by a change in the audiences with which I interact,
both individually and institutionally. What do I mean by that?
Well, thinking through the working of the judiciary as an institution,
I argue that the judiciary converges on a set of institutional preferences in response
to the preferences of the institution and networks with which audiences interact.
So when I talk about preferences, what do I mean?
I see that there are two types of institutional preferences, policy preferences and legal preferences.
Policy preferences respond to judges preferences on the question of state action and policy making
and legal preferences pertain to the judge's understanding of the court's goal in the legal system,
in the political system, and the ways in which judges approach the sources of law,
thus policy preferences about what kind of policy judges want to see at place.
And legal preferences are about what kind of role the courts must play in the judges.
They must stay in the political system as well.
And so I argue that the dominant factor that could develop within judicial institutions are a product of the interactions with the audiences,
with the judges interact. So what do I mean by audience?
I mean, in the context of an audience developed by the political science law, it's about an audience.
But the crux of this discussion would be political institutions, civilian political organisations, or socially professional groupings.
They're attentive to the decisions that judges make and about which judges have reason to believe reputations.
So why do judges care about their reputation? They don't stand for election or anything like that.
What do reputations mean and what is very important for judges?
But I hope that reputation building has both material and not material boxes.
But theory judges seek to advance their careers by gaining promotions and increasing benefits, monetary or otherwise,
and therefore they would seek to build their reputations with audiences who are in a position to influence the process of appointments,
promotions and rewards for the judiciary. But non battery charges also seem to build our reputation as evil judges to gain the esteem of
those so sure that professional networks are closely tied to their own esteem and satisfaction.
The job is tied to gaining such respect. Therefore,
it would seek to build their reputation with the groups and networks within which
they have been socialised and which they interact with and identify with regularly,
regularly as well.
So the judicial interested reputation building that I'm talking about, whether for career purposes or just to build their own esteem,
creates the opportunity for institutions that act outside the judiciary to shift institutional preferences within the judiciary.
And I describe the concept of institutional inter linkages, which are things that external actors have to the internal processes of the judiciary,
and that connect outside institutions to the internal structures and culture of the courts and make them particular audiences for judgements.
And in the book, I discuss two types of intelligence. The first is what I call utilitarian linkages.
What what I give it is that institutions, organisation or networks have a role in the appointments, promotions, probably the disciplining of judges.
I describe this as a utilitarian linkage.
So, for example, if the military or allied institutions have a role in the appointments, promotions and disciplining of judges, the military,
I would argue that has a utilitarian linkage with the judiciary because it's in a position to influence
the careers and the material trajectories and material aspects of a career and appointments and reports,
etc. And this therefore, this utilitarian linkage allows the military to appoint,
promote and materially benefit judges who build a reputation for making decisions in line with the preferences of the military.
These preferences could include policy preferences regarding the political agendas of the military and legal
preferences regarding the appropriate role for the judiciary in dealing with the military within that system.
Secondly, the second I talk about what I call WikiLeaks linkages.
So the socialist professional network soldiers that recruited and with which they interact with and seek to build esteem.
I do have normative intelligence as they that the norms with which judges have to comply in order to build a reputation and to
see the superior judiciary of any state is typically recruited from one or a combination of sections of the legal community.
And this that's what's shaped judges perceptions of what are acceptable and unacceptable actions by judges to date.
For example, if judges are recruited or appointed from networks of state bureaucrats that depend
on the executive and executive support and are disconnected from civil society,
we may be more inclined to endorse deference to executive institutions at the door.
Thus, we must pay attention to social characteristics and legal and policy preferences
of the sections of the legal community from which judges are recruited.
Objective to different sections of the legal community that are tied to the military or benefit from military supremacy.
I describe this as the military normative intellect with the judiciary.
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
gained esteem approved military section of the legal community from which they are recruited.
So the next judges are recruited from the authorities, that judges are recruited and promoted by board.
Seek to ensure that their preferences are reproduced on the bench.
I institutions embedded in these networks or acquisitions of authority over appointments.
And that's the critical organs for the judiciary,
which needs the judges who sincerely share or strategically endorse the audience's preferences when advancing their career and build their esteem.
And as this process repeats itself over time.
And more and more judges who express these preferences enter and move upward in the judicial hierarchy and give esteem and credibility as judges.
These preferences of those audiences would become normalised within the judicial
system and form what I call the institutional preferences of the judiciary.
So. Now where the military and its allies constitute the dominant audiences, i.e. where they have both normative and utilitarian linkages.
Only judges who sincerely share or strategically endorse the preferences and
values of the military will advance their careers and enhance their esteem.
Thus, the military is well-positioned to ensure that the legal and policy preferences underlying judicial behaviour align with the military interests.
As a result, we could imagine the greatest loyalty to the military and those of the regime.
What I call in this typology a noted court.
On the other hand, with neither the military nor its affiliates are in primary control of the appointment process,
nor at judges recruited from professional networks closely tied to the military.
The military and the judiciary would enjoy few to no institution linkages,
and thus the military position to shape the preferences of the judiciary are limited at best,
and the court produced by this is unlikely to see itself as necessarily subordinate to the military,
nor necessarily subscribe to the military ideological agenda making the likelihood of conflict and confrontation higher.
What I call the more confrontational court, because in the book I develop, as you can see here,
a typology of different relationships between the military and the judiciary that would shape the judiciary approach,
jurisprudential approach to the military. This typology outlines both how different institutional arrangements shape the variation in judicial.
The second best towards the military, right? Lawyer.
Politician You get a sense of the fashion of the jurisprudence and how judges said preferences regarding the military may change over time.
So as the linkages change, as the auditing of the judiciary change,
you can imagine courts moving from one category this typology to another based on those changes.
And that's when we come to the context of Pakistan. Right.
So in Pakistan, I argue that experience a shift in judicial assertiveness from from collaborating with to confronting military power.
I argue that when the audience is seated for career advancement and esteem,
building within the judicial system shifted away from authority to networks that were closely allied with the military.
The Pakistani judiciary shifted from a loyal court to a more ambitious constitutional court
that was more willing to contest the military when their interests and ambitions clashed.
And in the book I trace out the process through which the military and military related elites lost
their important role in shaping the institutional preferences underlying conditions behaviour.
To explain this, I carried out what I call the longest analysis of judicial behaviour towards the military in Pakistan from independence till 2020.
And the book tells you the internal dynamics of the judiciary to shed light on how judges think about and pursue reputation building.
And it connects the logic of reputation building with the adoption and
institutionalisation of preferences with industry and their impact on judicial behaviour.
But the exploration of the micro dynamics with institution institutions and their connection to broader
processes of change in regime structure and a shift in jurisprudence required practising a range of sources.
So this is a brief overview of the research that went into kind of the process
tracing actual action of this of this research and what you find in this book.
The book was based on 18 months of fieldwork in Pakistan, in which I collected quoted,
analysed over 1000 Supreme Court and High Court judgements relevant to this question,
conducted over 130 interviews with lawyers, judges, politicians and journalists.
I constructed archive of newspaper articles, bar association of institutions, judges, speeches, and judicial biographies.
And I use this evidence from these streams of data to carefully trace the process by which changes in the institutional
environment of the judiciary and changes in its audiences impacted the transformation institutional preferences,
which then cause variation in judicial subjects to what's the village.
So let's go through that process, right? Let's start with what I call that at the outset, the royal Court.
So off the box of independence, in the first 20 years,
the Park City Judiciary really picked all the characteristics of the judiciary, the kind of boxes, both military coup.
Soon after it boxes independence. The primary appointing authority of the judiciary was the military that executive.
Right. Therefore, professional success was linked to pleasing the military rulers and the political and bureaucratic allies.
Upward mobility within the superior judiciary in many ways depended upon endorsing a strong military, that executive.
So that was the cornerstone of what we call the utilitarian intellect,
which is that the military had the judiciary sticking it to the normative intellectuals, at least half who the judges came from.
At this time, government services subordinate to the military.
Exactly right. Executive branch. And the remainder came from the lawyers community in particular from the beginning to the time I was leading.
Lawyers at the time belonged to Pakistan's post-colonial elite, educated and trained here in the United Kingdom,
usually with strong ties to the bureaucratic and military opposite elite.
The emotion, the same network.
So the military regime actively sought to preserve the privileges of these networks as these boys and girls that were trained
and socialised to reproduce the very British colonial system that institutionalised itself with the executive branch.
So box the each at the time was appointed directly by the military regime and came from bureaucrats and post-colonial.
It needed Lawyers Board Network to check close ties with the military elite.
This system, I argue,
ensured that both the key audiences for career advancement and esteem building had a real interest in promoting the military authority,
thus constructing institutions of preferences that private collaboration with
and deference to the military in advancing its political agenda and interest.
I think this system anti-military, judicial activism could hardly be expected,
particularly those who desired to be appointed or reported had to have the approval of the military elites.
A daughter decides to build a team of judges within the legal and bureaucratic elite how to present that distant
from from mass politics and support for the maintenance of a military dominated system of law and order.
Thus, in this period of military and bureaucratic dominance of the political system, the judiciary,
through its support squarely behind the military regime, while carving out the continuing role and relevance for itself.
Now, obviously, there were moments where the judiciary also challenged the regime here and there at the time,
but by not the fact of judicial behaviour, the overwhelming, it was one of collaboration with a deference to the military executive.
But after independence, I discussed three processes that happened over time.
The sequence I'm going to discuss.
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.
In the 1990s,
fewer and fewer judges emerged from Pakistan's post-colonial elites as an increasing number of judges came from low key middle class backgrounds.
The reason that I discussed in the book for this is that as the rewards for private
commercial law increasingly outweighed the rewards for joining the judicial.
A growing proportion of elite lawyers gravitated towards commercial law.
So while the judiciary became more appealing to locally educated,
middle class lawyers seeking the upward mobility and respect promised by members of the judicial elite,
this is the changing nature of the legal profession in Pakistan and the changing rewards and
how between the private and public sector is something I discuss in more detail in the book.
But what this meant was that the composition of the network solely judges were primarily recruited, changed for the point educated and trained elite,
disconnected from Barth's politics and closely aligned with the military elite to a locally educated,
middle class network engaged with politics and less tied to future military rulers.
And as you see here, I thought if you know out this study of percentage of Supreme Court judges who are educated abroad.
Over time, you can see the market shift that takes place over this period.
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
your reputation and thus the democratic ship off the judiciary meant that the judiciary was no longer embedded in that post-colonial elite,
but increasingly in Pakistan, middle class. But the next question becomes, if these are the network with judges now, what to build their reputation?
What are the norms and preferences of these networks?
And that's the second point that comes to the shift in the preferences of the professional networks of judicial recruitment.
So again, with the way I talk about the politicisation of legal community,
so the noise community in Pakistan from where the judges were being recruited,
became increasingly involved in the 1960s and seventies onwards, with a tumultuous political events reshaping both the political order.
At the time these events ended, the monopoly certain elite groups had over the state politics as best society,
including legal networks, grew increasingly aware and engaged.
And bar associations evolve considerably now to become large associations teeming with noise from less privileged backgrounds.
Who is more attuned to the political and socio economic concerns of the middle class communities to which they belong.
However,
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.
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.
And what he did was he immediately banned all political activity,
the country banned all political parties and really suppress any venue for political activity.
But one of the first places he allowed the resumption of any kind of political activity were professional associations such as bar association.
Right. So suddenly Bar Association became one of the only venues in Pakistan where politics could still be legally practice.
Right. And but what this because this suddenly makes bar association increasingly
politically visible and relevant for politically interested activist lawyers,
etc. Just to give you an example, when I was doing my archival research in 1977,
when I looked at articles about the Fort Hopwood Bar Association election, there would be maybe three sentences in three and a half sentences.
By 1980, you had these long profiles in the newspapers of the candidates for these Lawyers Bar Association election.
Why? Simply because this was one of the only area of legitimate public political activity in town.
So newspapers were covering it. People were talking about it. And the public profile and presence of the bar substantially increased.
Right. So what it did was that this attracted political workers and party members to the bars and the bar.
And that became a site for politically ambitious lawyers to start using as a
platform to build a politics around opposing and challenging the military regime.
Political The active voice started running for elections in the Baath,
winning these elections and turning the bars into a platform for challenging and mobilising against the military regime.
At the time, I did in this period, an increasing norm.
Developments regarding the Baath Party to assert the independence of the military.
And I challenged the military as well.
And in the absence of these political venues and a norm of anti militarism and political activism was increasingly entrenched in the bar.
Now, with the end of military rule in 1980 1980s and the coming of Democratic and Democratic through the 1990s,
this political activism was translated into a broader agenda of socio economic and
political reform that the lawyers believed was to be realised that they needed to realise.
And indeed, consensus seemed to establish itself within the bar, and the focus of this activities was often a moving target shifting between generals,
bureaucrats or politicians who the parties loyal supporters corrupted, incompetent and incapable of shaping the political direction of the state.
It's really interesting when you study or read the Bar Association resolution of the 1990s.
You have bars of talk in all matters of affairs, whether it has to do with foreign policy, local policy.
I think that could Sindhi could be wrote a letter or the report wrote a letter to the
United Nations Security Council demanding a different solution to the Iraq crisis.
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.
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,
of lions in the zoo to protest political corruption.
Right. Do you really have any ambitious lawyers really wanted to make their impact on the politics of the Thai political
system and then by both the military and the politicians were ill equipped to really deal with these challenges.
And instead, what they wanted to see was their institution, which was the judiciary, really step up and become an activist,
interventionist institution and to set the country on the path that being what it should be.
All right.
And so by the 1990, this consensus of political and judicial activism was entrenched through the Bar Association in the major of its sentence.
So that's it. Now the norms in the networks to which judges are recruited and which they're seeking to build their reputations.
The third point that I make is, and you can see here this quote from one of the leading volunteers at the time.
He wants the courts to take action in the event pertaining to political corruption
to see if the system do you know this deep beneath this political culture,
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.
This is really way to see the political agenda of these lawyers. Theodore is heading that.
Now. So now I didn't you to the charity clinic right now.
The third part of the story is the separation of the judiciary from the executive.
The Constitution of 1973 in Pakistan, it established the principle that the judiciary and the executive have to be separate.
Right. And then in 1996, an important Supreme Court decision,
the Supreme Court significantly reduced the executive branch's discretion in appointments and
by giving the chief justices privacy and the primacy in judicial appointments at the time.
And in 2000, it did the court further reduced executive control with the establishment of the Judicial Commission to manage executive appointments.
What is that now? Within the past, the judicial selection in Pakistan did not necessarily require establishing a reputation with the executive branch.
And it does diminish the role of executive institutions in career advancement.
Secondly, what this meant was that I had the voice and role of the executive branch diminished in the course of appointments,
while the role of the Chief Justice's comedy roles. For me the goal of the bar increase in appointments as well.
These judges, the chief justice, is controlling the appointment process now when lawyers always themselves are being increasingly consulted with
and relied on the advice of their fellow lawyers from their respective go folks advice in making appointments.
Thus alongside reputation with Chief Justice's reputation within the noise community become an
increasingly important consideration in the process of judicial appointments and promotions.
As you can see, this Court, from what one judge was telling me, the reputation of the bar is very important.
You cannot hide your activities in the bar.
Problems can be created for unwanted judicial appointments. Whisper campaigns.
I've seen this happen at the shop.
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.
Not just your popularity, not just your standing and your reputation within the bar because of your career as well.
What this meant was that by the late 1990, the institution environment of the judiciary had to be completely rearranged.
And he ordered this, and judicial preferences had been largely altered as a consequence of these processes.
In particular, the and as I summarised here,
the set of these are the three processes I'm talking about of the military as the primary executive institution and affiliated elites,
but of pre-eminence in the judicial appointments system while the judges advantages become consequential audiences.
And secondly, judicial recruitment shifted from a section of the legal complex community that was more aligned to the military,
to one that did more independent from issues opposition to the bench.
Thus, a new consensus emerged within the judiciary at the time for greater activism,
greater political ambition and greater participation of military and civilian centres of power to which I will come to not.
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.
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.
Right. Of what happened was that what was happening now without added the sea changes that happened and increasingly going is pushing for
judges to demonstrate their independence from other studies and to intervene in the policy of politics of other state institutions.
And as the judiciary grew more visible in resolving disputes between state institutions and also the growth of public interest,
litigation in Pakistan reduced the procedural and jurisdiction restrictions on judicial interventions,
lawyers, exports to expand their role in governance.
And we saw a growing number of petitions in the late 1990 from lawyers demanding
a more interventionist role by courts and party that making such claims.
And we saw judges receptive to and supportive of such an approach as well.
And the impact became very clear in the sort of activist, interventionist approach that emerged in the 2000.
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.
Political parties also sought to establish close linkages with the judiciary at different times.
But the story of the key tradition that I think best explains the changing approach of the judiciary
at the time is the diminishing role of the military and increasing rule of the bar as well.
But I'm happy to talk about the political parties facing all this in the Q&A as well.
But yes, talking about the Constitution, Constitutional Court, as I call it,
becomes most evident during the tenure of Chief Justice IFTIKHAR Chaudhry in 2005 and the Chief Justice Chaudhry Fox,
who saw an explosive growth in what is called public interest education.
Chaudhry Justice Chaudhry set up reactivating the human rights set of the court,
which received numerous petitions about human rights violations and converted these into formal petitions for the court to hear.
The court also took up an increasing number of cases suo motu.
That's my goodness. Law, 2 minutes away. If it did that,
it did tell me that an issue was one of significant public importance and raise the question of the enforcement of fundamental rights that
the court reduced procedural and jurisdiction restrictions to take notice of a broad important number of the bits of and add to the court.
And that's I think you have to support it, which means even in the absence of a petitioner,
if the court, for example, saw a story in the media or a judge, so to read the media,
the data concerning they take it out, start hearing in the court and make a case out of this,
created a feedback loop between the media and the judiciary, right?
So as the court take, the media would discuss the issue.
Court would take it up, the media would cover the courts taking up those issues.
And it made the job increasingly more public. And the fifth biggest opposed the litigation was was restricted to more small scale issues.
But clearly that changed the court to more ambition. Here are two examples.
The Court You look at separation and advance governance.
So first the I talk about the privatisation of toxins.
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.
Right now, the petition before the court claimed that the steel mills assets was sold for a price lower than the value.
I asked the court to review the privatisation process,
but the proceedings of the case to the Court overturned the entire privatisation of those massive
steel mills for significantly impacting the military regime of the time of economic plans.
But the proceedings of the case also shed light on the consulted priorities of the judges.
So justice for observed in the judgement that although the Court has not permitted policies,
it had a mandate to adjudicate as to whether the privatisation policies were in the national interest.
The Court was therefore placing itself in a position to ascertain what was in the national interest or not.
The other judge Justice put the voice the court's policy preferences seeking that he was simply opposed to privatisation
because entities having of strategic importance cannot be sold to foreign investors who are just opposed to privatisation.
So he was going to overturn it on that record.
So what you really see is what becomes the is how these quotes get comfortable weighing in into being a major question of policy,
articulating their preferences regarding policy, and claiming authority to determine what was and what is not in the national interest.
I spoke about another case where the other case with the judicial system of the important sacred with
the court states that the judiciary was obliged to act as the administrator of the public will.
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
and show you that impact policy and governance and government in Pakistan based on this.
Right now the power during this time during which you had grown more worried
about judicial appointments and the conduct of judges and bar associations,
condemned judges who collaborated with the judges and even released a white paper on the judiciary which
caused a name and shame judges who had bad reputations and discussed corruption amongst these judges as well.
I was leading noise coming from the bar like Justice Jose.
What conscious about the reputation within these groups? Leading lawyers who had made these judges that would help these judges get appointed.
Now, the judges indicated that I expected them to make decisions in light of the preferences.
Judges who also more concerned about, as became increasingly public figures about how their reputations were projected to the public.
And very often it was lawyers coming on TV channels talking about their judgements and shaping those reputations in the public.
As one judge told me, the bar was the loudspeaker of the judges.
And the third reason lawyers really cared about their reputation also at this time was the mobilisation potential of the lawyers.
So in 2007, when General Justice Chaudhry was suspended by General Musharraf,
noise around the country actively mobilised and supported the judges who decided to defy the regime.
The events of the lawyers which showed the body that had the capacity to mobilise the bar and this mobilisation potentially on full display.
But there were thousands of lawyers in ballrooms around the country with few cases and few opportunities and very little to do.
And there were always ready made footsoldiers for bodyguards to call out on the streets day after day,
protesting and challenging the regime, challenging the regime at the time.
And that really that mobilisation could be especially consequential at that point.
And even after the events of 2078, this dynamic is beginning to cease.
All the lawyers, movement lawyers continue to rely on the mobilisation potential to pressure and control the judges and
frequently resorted to it and aggressive tactics against judges and other rival groups of lawyers,
especially thus we see the bars willingness and ability to pressure judges has grown significantly.
Judges who pursued the agenda of the bar were actively supported by the bar, and judges who felt out of line became the targets.
And this these three key aspects come together to form the Iraqi court competition court, a judiciary that was unwilling to accept the community,
collaborated in appalling and I think,
institution supremacy and was focus on establishing its own role as an independent power centre and should be the policy politics of the state.
But importantly, though, why this explains the emergence of a more ambitious, assertive and competition judiciary.
This is not me. The judiciary became more democratic.
Yes, it challenged military institutions, but it also sought to confront and constrain civilian institutions as well.
And I also show how, in the decades since the military regime in 2008, 2018,
the institution very institution property that motivated the court to confront the military,
also drove it to challenge it either by force authoritarian elected governments with mixed consequences for the democratic future.
50,000 dead. The courts increasingly intervene at every mark of governance and in doing so frequently overturn decisions made by political branches,
undermine the report, overrule the policies,
and justify these actions based on critiques of the corruption and incompetence of the political branches.
There's no doubt that the longstanding practices of corruption and maladministration needed to be come back.
However, the way the court went about these interventions frequently meant the judiciary was supplanting the
authority of the other branches of government and limiting and de-legitimize the electoral supremacy.
Perhaps this verdict by the court against. At that time,
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
the decision where the ousted nwaoboshi from power and indeed placed a nightgown on him standing as premier on the breaches of civil charges.
Right. This by the court could now put individuals from political office and political life on the beat without even a criminal conviction.
Right. And the court justified doing that by making the statement that the court had the power to, quote unquote,
cleanse the fountainhead of the authority of the state so that the trickle down authority may also become unpolluted.
That's the court decree. So itself has having the vision to purify the state of politics of Pakistan.
And so this opposition to both military and political party dominance shaped the judge's repeated interventions into the regime structure,
electoral processes and policy making up the state of the political system.
As one politician debated, what can we do when all these judges all think they are beside us now?
All come to save the people? And thus, I guess, a constitutional court, I argue, is not necessarily a pro-democracy court,
because these very decisions weaken electoral institutions and eventually help engineer the political landscape in
Pakistan to make to permit the military to return to a prominent political role in boxes politics after 2000 of instead,
the aspiration for pre-eminent role managing state institutions and governance can both undermine both the authority regimes,
but also weaken and paralyse elected civilian governments so that you can sort of a in the book,
I would argue the change in judicial organs is crucial for expanding the judiciary, collaborating with the people, fighting military governance.
But this is not to dismiss the relevance of other factors that contributed as well, including the political structure of the state,
the waxing and waning of military power, or alternatively,
individual chief justice is a dead belief that action all of these is bad in a different time.
But I believe this story of shifting judicial power ambition can only best be
told if we understand the role of audiences in shaping the judicial trajectory.
And I believe this project provided some lessons for the study of judicial politics.
More broadly,
it reveals how politically powerful militaries shape the willingness and ability of the judiciary to assert civilian control over the military.
It highlights the role of the legal community in shaping judicial behaviour,
and it shows that judges are motivated by both material and opportunities, goals.
And finally, this book contributes to this dialogue about new judicial conception and the judicial ization of politics.
By explaining how fast the judiciary shifted from the commitment to upholding the procedural requirements of a colonial
era legal framework designed to uphold the executive power to the commitment to champion its own judicial rights.
Conception of the public interest. Thank you. I keep it that.