“The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.” — William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

There are moments in the constitutional life of nations when Shakespeare’s warning begins to acquire contemporary meaning. Moments when the majesty of law retreats into silence. The fall of the Western Roman Empire taught us one thing: institutions do not collapse dramatically; they decay quietly. Their buildings remain standing. Their ceremonies continue uninterrupted. Judges may still wear robes. Courtrooms may still function. Cause lists may still circulate. Yet somewhere beneath the pompous architecture of constitutionalism, the soul of justice quietly departs. Pakistan appears to have entered such an unfortunate moment.

The question confronting Pakistan today is no longer whether constitutional law exists textually. Indisputably, the Constitution still survives in books, speeches, judicial oaths and ceremonies. The real question is whether the law is merely sleeping, as Shakespeare warned, or whether the prolonged silence of institutions has begun resembling something far more permanent.

There was a time when judicial relief in Pakistan carried genuine constitutional meaning. A litigant approached the courts, exercising his fundamental constitutional right of access to justice guaranteed under Article 9 of the Constitution, believing adjudication would eventually arrive. Relief meant acquittal. Relief meant bail. Relief meant suspension of sentence. Relief meant the restoration of rights unlawfully taken away by the state. Relief meant restraining the executive from excess or abuse of power. Courts were understood as the ultimate legal restraint upon the arbitrary, capricious and unstructured exercise of discretion by the executive.

Nevertheless, in contemporary Pakistan, particularly within politically sensitive litigation or cases affecting the interests of the deep state, the meaning of judicial relief has undergone an outrageous transformation. Future constitutional pundits may one day study this transformation as a separate pathology of institutional decline. Relief no longer means success in litigation. It no longer even means obtaining a favourable judicial order. Increasingly, relief means something........

© The Friday Times