Name: Courting Constitutionalism: The Politics of Public Law and Judicial Review in Pakistan
Brand: Cambridge University Press
SKU: 9781108927451
Price: 440.38 HKD
Availability: InStock
Author: Moeen Cheema
ISBN: 9781108927451

Courting Constitutionalism: The Politics of Public Law and Judicial Review in Pakistan

By Moeen Cheema

Cambridge University Press February 2025

Specifications

ISBN-13: 9781108927451
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication: February 2025
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

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Hardback

Details

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.

Table of Contents

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