Revisiting District Bar Association v The Federation of Pakistan |
The only aftermath of Twenty-Seventh constitutional amendment happens to be the re-emergence of the debate surrounding the scope of parliament’s amending power. This renewed relevance necessitates a re-examination of District Bar Association v Federation of Pakistan. The court engaged with the question whether parliament possesses unlimited authority to amend the constitution or whether that power is constrained by implied limitations, commonly described as the Basic Structure or Salient Features of the constitution in detail. Although the immediate controversy arose from challenges to the Eighteenth Amendment, the proceedings compelled the court to confront a much broader dilemma; parliamentary sovereignty or constitutional fundamentals?
Pakistan’s constitutional jurisprudence has historically demonstrated hesitance in adopting the Basic Structure doctrine as developed by the Indian Supreme Court. In the early years following the 1973 Constitution, the Court engaged with the notion of a grund norm, most notably in Asma Jilani, where the Objectives Resolution and the sovereignty of Allah were acknowledged as foundational. However, subsequent decisions in State v Zia-ur-Rehman and Federation of Pakistan v United Sugar Mills firmly clarified that such recognition did not empower the judiciary to invalidate constitutional provisions on the basis of philosophical concepts, national aspirations, or an assumed basic structure. The Court emphasized that, as a creature of the Constitution, it could not annul the very instrument from which it derived its authority. This position was further reinforced in Dewan Textile Mills, where it was held that Parliament, when amending the Constitution, exercises a constituent power distinct from ordinary legislative authority, and that the validity of a constitutional amendment is not........