The writer is a lawyer and an academic.
COURTS have come to occupy a distinctively unique place in modern states given their multifarious but quintessential roles not only in the development of jurisprudence and adjudication of disputes but also in determining the questions that have a considerable bearing on such diverse areas as fundamental rights, economic efficiency, environmental protection, treaty enforcement, electoral transparency, and in extreme cases, even resolution of political disputes. Hence, the selection of the superior judiciary has become an arduous if not a highly contentious issue, involving competence, integrity, belief, affiliation, background, etc.
Incidentally, our judiciary is also in the eye of a ‘storm’ generated by the recent elevation of Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar as a judge of the Supreme Court. Otherwise, a highly competent and popular judge of the Sindh High Court, he is junior to four judges, including the chief justice who happens to be the senior-most among the sitting chief justices of the high courts. It is not the first such appointment though. Our history is replete with instances of senior and deserving judges being deprived of their right to be appointed to their due positions in the higher judiciary.