Courting Constitutionalism
The Politics of Public Law and Judicial Review in Pakistan
Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law Series

Over the last decade, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has emerged as a powerful and overtly political institution. While the strong form of judicial review adopted by the Supreme Court has fostered the perception of a sudden and ahistorical judicialisation of politics, the judiciary's prominent role in adjudicating issues of governance and statecraft was long in the making. This book presents a deeply contextualised account of law in Pakistan and situates the judicial review jurisprudence of the superior courts in the context of historical developments in constitutional politics, evolution of state structures and broader social transformations. This book highlights that the bedrock of judicial review has remained in administrative law; it is through the consistent development of the 'Writ jurisdiction' and the judicial review of administrative action that Pakistan's superior courts have progressively carved an expansive institutional role and aggrandised themselves to the status of the regulator of the state.

1. Introduction; 2. Postcolonial legality: fragments of the rule of law and constitutionalism; 3. Martial rule: military‒bureaucratic authoritarianism and 'basic' constitutionalism; 4. Elective dictatorship: socialist populism and the myth of a consensus constitution; 5. Praetorian governmentality: Islamisation of laws and the genesis of substantive constitutionalism; 6. Indirect praetorianism: 'public interest litigation' and the first wave of judicial activism; 7. Military‒civil composite: 'military incorporated' and the 'lawyers' movement'; 8. Corporatist governance: the 'Chaudhry court' and 'judicial proactivism'; 9. Conclusion: judicialisation of politics in Pakistan.

Moeen Cheema is Associate Professor in Law and an Australian Research Council DECRA fellow at the Australian National University. He is recognised as one of the leading experts in the fields of constitutional law, judicial review, criminal justice reform and access to justice in Pakistan.