LAWYERS’ MOVEMENT AND EXECUTIVE-JUDICIARY RELATIONS IN PAKISTAN
Keywords:
Judiciary, executive, judicial activism, Lawyers’ MovementAbstract
General Musharraf suspended Chief Justice (CJ) Chaudhry on the charges of corruption and misuse of authority. This was the start of protest movement by the lawyer community for restoration of CJ, in turn for the independence of judiciary. The Lawyers’s Movement (LM) was later joined by all factions of civil society especially in urban areas almost paralysing social and economic activities. After being restored, CJ Chaudhry took a number of suo-moto actions in public matters and declared PCO and NRO as unconstitutional. It was a start of new era of judicial-activism setting the new patterns of executive-judiciary relationship. This paper focuses on how social groups started a movement against a military dictator and what were the results of judicial-activism on the political scenario of Pakistan. How did a social movement shape the pattern of executive-judiciary relations in the long run and whether these patterns continued under civilian governments? It also identifies the consequences that created institutional imbalance and partially paused the working of two eminent government institutions.
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