Miscarriage of Chief Justice: Judicial Power and the Legal Complex in Pakistan under Musharraf

Abstract:     
This article explores the struggle for judicial power in Pakistan under Pervez Musharraf focusing on two questions. First, how did pro-Musharraf regime judges expand judicial power, leading to a confrontation with the regime? Second, how did the bar and the bench mobilize in the struggle for judicial power? The author shows how, instead of blindly supporting economic liberalization in a period of economic growth, the Supreme Court expanded power by scrutinizing questionable urban development, privatization, and deregulation measures in a virtuous cycle of public interest litigation. The author also describes how a politics of reciprocity explains the social mobilization of lawyers as the bench protected the bar from regime penetration, and the bar protected the bench from regime backlash. The Pakistani case questions some of our assumptions about economic liberalization and courts in authoritarian regimes; and the study invites scholars to explore the role of courts in developing judicial support structures and the role of lawyers in social movements.

Keywords: Pakistan, lawyers movement, economic liberalization, public interest litigation, judicialization of politics, judicial independence, constitutional crisis, authoritarianism, democratic transition, NRO, bar, bench, media, chief justice, Musharraf, Iftikhar M. Chaudhry, Aitzaz Ahsan

Accepted Paper Series