TRUE to his reputation of being a firm believer in rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution and quick dispensation of justice, the new Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Qazi Faez Isa began his tenure with absolutely transparency by constituting full court to hear identical petitions challenging Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act 2023 and allowing, for the first time in the history of the country, its proceedings to be broadcast live. It was a unique experience in our judicial history that all 15 judges of the apex court sat together in front of cameras to hear an important case, conveying a message of hope to the people of Pakistan that the judiciary might be on its way to play its role as envisaged in the Constitution.
The move has widely been acclaimed by almost all segments of the society but as always has been the case with every new initiative, there are also some skeptics who claim public hearing of the cases could affect quality of the verdicts as instead of merit and legality the issues might be decided to the liking of the public opinion. However, this experiment is successfully being carried out in a number of countries including our neighbour India and different countries have different yardsticks to decide which cases are to be broadcast live. In some countries constitutional cases are broadcast live while others do so in the case of all cases heard by the benches headed by the Chief Justice besides a number of countries that broadcast live all cases heard by the apex court. The idea to broadcast important cases live in Pakistan was mooted by Justice Qazi Faez Isa himself during hearing of reference against him. At that time, the majority had decided that cases of fundamental importance ought to be broadcast live but the modalities for the purpose were to be decided by the administrative side of the top court, which never considered the issue for understandable reasons. Credit goes to Justice Faez Isa to make a quick decision on the pending issue and afford an opportunity to the people of Pakistan to have a real feeling of what happens inside the apex court. Contrary to the viewpoint of some members of the legal community, the decision to go live would encourage all judges to express themselves purely in the legal framework and decide things on the basis of merit and fair-play without fear or favour. The reputation of the judiciary stands dented because of some autocratic tendencies of the past and hopefully the willingness of the new CJP to go to any extent for the sake of transparency and accountability would help restore the credibility of the institution. It would be in the fitness of things if all cases of fundamental importance are broadcast live to ensure that decisions have the collective wisdom behind them and are not considered to be wishes and aspirations of the ‘like-minded’ judges. Similarly, the presiding judge will have the special responsibility to guard against the tendency of playing to the galleries and keeping the arguments as well as questioning strictly to the merits of the case concerned. Unlike most of his predecessors who enjoyed absolute powers and used them mercilessly, Justice Qazi deserves appreciation for declaring on the very first day his firm conviction in accountability and transparency, adding categorically he doesn’t want powers that make him unaccountable. His predecessor used his vast discretionary powers till his last day in office but Justice Isa proved himself different by forming benches in consultation with two other senior most judges in line with the spirit of the law that has been challenged before the Supreme Court. The CJP observed that the power of suo motu jurisdiction devolved to a three-member committee under the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act 2023 was not an attempt to curtail powers of the chief justice. The remarks made by the CJP and other honourable judges and the short order given by the full court (lifting stay on implementation of the Act) before rising to meet again on 3 October would help scrap the impression of interference into each others’ domain by the pillars of the state.
