Pakistan’s judiciary, long projected as a last bastion of accountability and constitutional oversight, is now trapped in a perilous crisis of credibility.
What was once viewed as the guardian of democratic balance has been thrust into a vortex of political manipulation, institutional infighting, and structural capture.
The judiciary’s unravelling—set in motion by political engineering and sustained through constitutional distortion—has left the rule of law hanging by a thread.
The question that now looms large is whether Pakistan’s courts will continue to function as impartial arbiters of justice or collapse into instruments of control, validating repression under the guise of legality.
The rot runs deep. The trajectory of this decline traces back to the unrest following the 2023 arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The nationwide protests that ensued were met with a sweeping state crackdown—thousands of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supporters were rounded up, many charged under military laws that bypassed civilian courts entirely.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court attempted to assert its constitutional authority by declaring the military trials of civilians unconstitutional, a ruling briefly hailed as a rare act of judicial courage in a country dominated by its armed establishment. But that defiance proved short-lived.
Within a year, the military and its political allies orchestrated a structural retaliation designed to ensure such independence would never reappear.
On October 21, 2024, the 26th Constitutional Amendment was passed—legislation that effectively placed the judiciary under executive surveillance. Two provisions stood out for their brazen manipulation.
First, the creation of a Special Parliamentary Committee, composed mainly of political actors, empowered to appoint the Chief Justice of Pakistan. Second, the reconfiguration of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP), previously an institution balanced between judicial and political members, now skewed decisively in favour of the executive and legislature.
This constitutional overhaul dismantled the traditional seniority-based system for judicial appointments and replaced it with a mechanism of political patronage.
The newly empowered JCP was ordered to constitute a “Constitutional Bench,” the sole authority on constitutional interpretation—a parallel structure that diluted the Supreme Court’s autonomy.
It was a calculated move: remove the independence of appointment, and the independence of judgment will follow.
The implications of these developments are devastating. As Santiago Canton, Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists, warned, the amendments introduce “an extraordinary level of political influence over judicial appointments and administration,” eroding the judiciary’s ability to check executive overreach or protect fundamental rights.
Even the process of passing the amendment was an insult to democratic procedure—drafts were kept secret, no public consultations took place, and the bill was bulldozed through Parliament without meaningful debate. What emerged was a hollow ritual of lawmaking, stripped of legitimacy and driven by expedience.
The effects of this engineered subordination were soon laid bare. On May 7, the newly constituted Constitutional Bench delivered its first verdict—a devastating blow to the already fragile notion of judicial independence.
In a stark reversal of the Supreme Court’s October 2023 ruling, the Bench reinstated clauses of the Pakistan Army Act that permit military trials of civilians.
Justified in the name of “national security” and “public order,” the decision restored to the military its unchecked power over civilian life. What was presented as a legal clarification was, in essence, a judicial surrender.
This verdict was not merely a reversal of legal reasoning—it was the institutionalisation of fear. It marked the judiciary’s transformation into a defensive shield for authoritarianism, cloaking repression in constitutional language.
The Bench’s validation of military trials has normalised the erosion of due process and numbed public outrage against authoritarian excesses. When courts become complicit in legitimising the suspension of civil liberties, the moral architecture of justice itself collapses.
The judiciary’s internal discord has further accelerated this decline. Factions within the Supreme Court have turned their benches into political theatres, where judgments are shaped as much by personal rivalries as by constitutional reasoning.
Senior judges publicly accuse each other of bias, leaks to the media fuel partisan narratives, and whispers of “telephone justice”—where verdicts are dictated by unseen powers—have become common parlance.
The spectacle of judicial fragmentation has not only corroded public trust but also emboldened the political establishment to tighten its grip.
The passage of the 26th Amendment and the subsequent constitutional reversals expose a deeper crisis—one not merely of interpretation, but of institutional identity.
The judiciary, once the guardian of constitutional supremacy, now stands accused of legitimising the very forces it was designed to restrain.
In aligning itself with executive and military interests, it has abdicated its moral authority and surrendered the foundational principle of separation of powers.
For Pakistan’s citizens, this crisis is not abstract. The judiciary’s decline translates directly into the erosion of civil liberties and the normalisation of state impunity.
The military’s reasserted jurisdiction over civilian trials means that thousands can be detained, tried, and sentenced without a transparent legal process. Lawyers, activists, and journalists who once looked to the courts for protection now face an institution increasingly viewed as an extension of state power.
The judiciary’s predicament is compounded by its selective assertiveness—swift to act in cases involving political opposition, yet strikingly passive when confronted with institutional overreach by the military or intelligence agencies.
This pattern of deference has entrenched a two-tier system of justice, where power dictates legality and accountability becomes a privilege of the powerless.
The result is an erosion of public confidence so deep that court verdicts, once symbols of finality, are now seen as tools of political strategy.
What makes the current crisis particularly dangerous is its self-perpetuating nature.
The judiciary’s loss of independence invites further encroachment, while each act of subservience reinforces its marginalisation.
The institutional culture of fear—fueled by threats, intimidation, and the lure of promotion—ensures silence where resistance is most needed. Even those judges who attempt to preserve integrity find themselves isolated, their dissent framed as disloyalty rather than principle.
The judiciary’s crisis is thus not only structural but existential. It reflects a fundamental breakdown in the idea that law can exist independently of power.
In Pakistan’s political ecosystem, where military dominance has long shaped governance, the courts have often oscillated between brief assertions of autonomy and prolonged periods of submission.
But today’s crisis feels more terminal than cyclical. The very mechanisms of constitutional oversight have been rewritten to neutralise dissent, ensuring that compliance is no longer coerced but codified.
The Daily Mirror’s assessment captures this grim reality: “Independence is no longer under threat; it is being actively dismantled.”
The judiciary’s collaboration in its own disempowerment has hollowed out one of the last institutional checks on authoritarian resurgence. The rule of law, once upheld as a bulwark against tyranny, now risks becoming its legal instrument.
What remains is a judiciary divided, discredited, and dangerously pliant. Its internal discord mirrors the fragmentation of Pakistan’s democracy itself—a system where power has learned to disguise coercion as consensus, and subservience as order.
The battle for judicial independence is no longer confined to courtrooms or constitutional texts; it is a struggle over whether Pakistan will continue to pretend to be a constitutional democracy or openly embrace the authoritarian logic that already governs it.
The erosion of judicial credibility has left Pakistan’s legal edifice hollow. Verdicts no longer command respect, rulings no longer inspire confidence, and courts no longer stand as sanctuaries of justice. What remains is a façade—an institution that speaks the language of law but serves the logic of control. In this crisis of credibility, the judiciary’s silence has become its loudest confession.
