David Dyzenhaus’s research while affiliated with University of Toronto and other places

While the ambitions of this book are by and large localised – to explain the historical evolution of public law and judicial review in Pakistan – it is hoped that such a grounded description will also provide an insight into the theorisation of the judicialisation of politics worldwide. The concluding chapter situates the history of judicial review in Pakistan within three broad frameworks that are generally employed within comparative public law literature for describing and analysing the judicialisation of politics in a given polity. Ultimately, however, this book argues that a deeply descriptive account of the non-linear expansion of judicial power in Pakistan may help highlight how fluid and dynamic the process of judicialisation can be. Furthermore, at any given time a range of factors and players may contribute to the expansion of and/or resistance to a more assertive judicial role. Therefore, this book represents a call to eschew over-reliance on global frameworks to explain and evaluate the increasing significance of courts anywhere and everywhere, but instead to situate the politics of particular courts in specific historical and political contexts.

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.