Pakistan dispatch: High Court judges petition Supreme Court, challenge Chief Justice’s authority – JURIST

Abu Bakar Khan is a JURIST staff correspondent and lawyer based in Pakistan.

On Friday morning, five sitting judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) walked into the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP)—not to hear cases, but to file one.

In an extraordinary and historic move, Justices Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, Babar Sattar, Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan, and Saman Rafat Imtiaz appeared as petitioners against their own Chief Justice, Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar.

The five judges argued that the Chief Justice’s use of administrative powers—such as forming benches, transferring cases, and setting rosters—exceeded constitutional limits. They maintained that once a case is assigned to a bench, it cannot be withdrawn or reassigned.

The petitioners also asserted that the Chief Justice could not exclude other judges from rosters to prevent them from exercising judicial authority. According to the petitioners, these practices threaten judicial independence and litigants’ rights.

Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri filed a separate appeal challenging a September 16 order barring him from performing his judicial duties in a case questioning the legitimacy of his Karachi University law degree. He argued that, under the Supreme Court’s 2010 Iftikhar Chaudhry judgment (Pakistan Legal Decisions 2010 Supreme Court 61), temporarily restricting a judge’s judicial authority amounts to removal from office—prohibited by Article 185(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan.

In his appeal, Justice Jehangiri described the September 16 order as “mala fide”—in “bad faith”—, noting that it violated basic legal principles. He cautioned that permitting a High Court bench to restrain other judges would undermine the principle of collegiality and reduce the constitutional office of a judge to that of ministerial staff, suspended at will and “acting as a proxy for the executive.”

Collectively, the petitions invoke multiple constitutional provisions: Article 184(3) (Supreme Court jurisdiction in matters of public importance), Article 192 (constitution of High Courts), Article 202 (rule-making powers of High Courts), and Article 203 (supervision of subordinate courts). The judges further contended that the IHC’s writ jurisdiction under Article 199 cannot be directed inward against its own members. At the same time, they challenged the legality of the IHC Practice and Procedure Rules, 2025, claiming the rules were adopted by improperly constituted committees.

The current judicial crisis traces back to the judges’ open resistance to military interference in the judiciary. In 2023 and 2024, the five petitioning judges—along with one other IHC judge—wrote to the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the Supreme Judicial Council, publicly accusing state agencies of intimidation, surveillance, and interference in their judicial functions. The letter prompted the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice, but instead of reforms, a “takeover” of the IHC soon followed.

The transfer of judges from provincial High Courts into the IHC were carried out hastily, designed to sideline any judge who opposed military interference. The IHC Chief Justice’s practice of arbitrarily transferring ongoing cases between benches, or constituting benches according to his preferences further proves the abuse of administrative authority. All of this amounts to a systematic dismantling of IHC’s judicial independence and is a part of a broader pattern that began with the controversial 26th Constitutional Amendment.

The question now is what happens next. Will these petitions be promptly set down for hearing, or quietly consigned to the record room like so many other politically inconvenient cases—including the long-pending challenge to the 26th Amendment itself? And if they are heard, which bench will take them up: one of the few seen as independent, or those constituted under the very amendment and transfers now under challenge? These are not mere procedural questions. They go to the heart of whether the judiciary is prepared to confront its own internal crises.

At stake is more than the authority of five judges. On trial is the balance between judicial independence and executive interference by the establishment—and whether the constitutional guarantee of separation of powers still holds meaning in Pakistan. The petitions expose what many lawyers and litigants already whisper: that internal case management is now a tool of control, allowing dissenting voices on the bench to be sidelined without due process. If the Supreme Court avoids a firm ruling, the price will be further erosion of public trust in the judiciary—a trust already badly eroded.

What should happen is very clear. The Supreme Court must issue a categorical ruling that administrative powers cannot strip fellow judges of constitutional authority; that rosters and transfers must follow clear and transparent rules; and that the independence of each judge is as vital as the court’s independence. Anything less than such a declaration would invite further manipulation, reducing the judicial office the establishment’s pawn.

This is, therefore, a moment of reckoning. Either the Supreme Court reclaims its role as guardian of the Constitution and sets clear limits on administrative power, or it signals that even the highest court cannot shield its own judges from establishment manipulation. The choice will determine not only the fate of these petitions but also the credibility of Pakistan’s judiciary in the eyes of its people.

Opinions expressed in JURIST Dispatches are solely those of our correspondents in the field and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST’s editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.