ONE would need more than 10 fingers to count the number of lawyers who have governed Pakistan since its inception.
Our founder was a lawyer; our first prime minister a lawyer. Our former prime minister, sentenced to death by a court of law, was a lawyer. Others with law degrees have appeared in court, either as plaintiffs or as defendants. And a few have applied their juridical talents to bending or subverting the law.
One would imagine that Pakistan is awash with lawyers. It has 160,000 plus registered lawyers (98,000 in Punjab alone). In fact, we are not the most litigious nation, by far. Israel is, with 694 lawyers per 100K of population. The US has 401 lawyers per 100K. The UK has 226 per 100K, with almost as many lawyers — 153,600 — as Pakistan, serving a far smaller population.
Yet, the British judicial system, despite its “efficient legal processes, rigorous legal education, and a focus on mediation and arbitration”, has a backlog of over 64,000 cases. Pakistan has 2.23 million cases waiting to be decided in all our courts. Of these, as of end December 2023, some 56,000 cases lay unresolved before the Supreme Court.
An eloquence of judges degenerated into a quarrel........