Banking on military justice
In 2015, when parliament passed the 21st Amendment that allowed constitutionally protected military courts to try terrorism suspects, many reluctant lawmakers offered their mea culpas. Indeed, how can one forget…
Hybrid courts
Fata gets democracy; Pakistan will get military courts — same decision-makers, two very different decisions. How the hell do you reconcile the two? The easiest answer is what the boys…
A court trial through the media
The Supreme Court justices are going to put a finale to the most publicly conducted trial in the history of Pakistan after the submission of the JIT report about investigations…
No military solution
Let’s start with what we don’t know. Experts remain uncertain what chemical(s) were involved in the horrific chemical attack, almost certainly from the air, on the village of Khan Sheikhun…
For the court to think about
What is the Panama case? Is it a media trial or a court trial? Is it the 2018 election campaign that has started prematurely? Where is the long-cherished norm of…
All eyes on the apex court
Next week among matters of import, the Supreme Court will take up a review petition of Imdad Ali, a man convicted of murder who has been awaiting his fate on…
Military march
A British politician, Enoch Powell, once remarked that all political careers end in failure. Richard Nixon may have reached the White House but later, as he looked back on his…
An anti-Chaudhry court?
Legal eye After the expansion and contraction of the Supreme Court’s moral authority under Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s watch, there emerged a sense that judges lower down in the SC…
Supreme Court on blasphemy
The killing of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his security guard Mumtaz Qadri, on the allegation of blasphemy and in the name of Islam, was never merely a murder case.…
Rainbow Supreme Court
Public discourse on the Pakistani Supreme Court is structured either by instinctual reactions based on prejudices and guided by arbitrary examples, leading to hating or loving certain judges. Or by…
