A critical analysis of the 26th amendment of the constitution of pakistan
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UMT.Lahore
Abstract
The Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendment (2024) is Pakistan’s most sweeping
judicial reform since 2010, overhauling the processes of judge-selection, introducing
performance evaluations, enshrining an explicit right to a clean and healthy environment (Art. 9A), and narrowing the Supreme Court’s suo motu jurisdiction. This thesis offers the first integrated, empirical assessment of the amendment’s early impact. Guided by a constructivist paradigm, the study employs documentary analysis, 29 semi-structured elite interviews, two focus-group discussions, and targeted docket tracking across the Supreme Court and four provincial High Courts during the amendment’s first two years (2024-2025).
Findings show that widening the Judicial Commission to include legislators modestly
reduces executive dominance but replaces it with coalition bargaining, lengthening
nomination timelines by roughly three weeks. New performance metrics lift case-disposal rates 10 percent yet generate ―evaluation anxiety,‖ prompting some judges to triage complex matters. Article 9A triggers a surge of innovative environmental litigation, though weak agency capacity threatens meaningful enforcement. Curtailment of suo motu powers sharply decreases spontaneous apex interventions while redirecting public-interest activism toward structured petitions and lower-court remedies. The study advances a ―dynamic equilibrium‖ model, illustrating how independence mechanisms, managerial accountability, constitutionalised environmental rights, and recalibrated activism interact as a feedback loop. It recommends a merit-matrix statute for appointments, refined complexity-weighted performance indicators, a framework law to operationalise and fast-track public-interest benches to absorb activism displaced from suo motu. The thesis contributes to comparative constitutional scholarship by demonstrating that bold textual reforms yield mixed outcomes unless matched by transparent criteria, administrative resources, and iterative oversight.
Keywords: Twenty-Sixth Amendment; Pakistan judiciary; judicial appointments;
performance evaluation; environmental constitutionalism; suo motu jurisdiction; judicial independence; constitutional reform; public-interest litigation.