It has been seven decades since the independent state of Pakistan was carved out of British India, yet the country is still in pursuit of a suitable constitutional framework. Over this period of time, no other country has experimented with so many different constitutional forms, from parliamentary democracy to presidential form of government, to outright military regimes. This book analyses constitutional development in Pakistan from its inception to present times. It provides a case-by-case account of constitution-making in Pakistan, with the inclusion of all pertinent documentation. Constitutional developments have been explained in the context of social and political events that shaped them. The book focuses on constitutional and political history, and constitutional development concurrently. It includes a liberal humanitarian reading of the travails of lawmakers and the role of generals, judges, politicians, and bureaucrats in the implementation of law. Students of law, political science, and history, as well as lawyers, judges, and professors will find this book of particular value. Being grounded in a socio-political context, this book is also of interest to the general reader. The third edition is updated to cover the constitutional and political developments up until 2013.

The political history of Pakistan is characterised by incomplete constitution-making, a process which has placed the burden of constitutional interpretation on state instruments ranging from the bureaucracy to the military to the judiciary. In a penetrating and original study of the relationship between state and civil society in Pakistan, Paula Newberg demonstrates how the courts have influenced constitutional development and the structure of the state. By examining judicial decisions, particularly those made at times of political crisis, she considers how tensions within the judiciary, and between courts and other state institutions, have affected the ways political society views itself, and explores the consequences of these debates for the formal organisation of political power.

This volume provides a contextual account of Pakistan's constitutional laws and history. It aims to describe the formal structure of government in reference to origins that are traced to the administrative centralisation and legal innovations of colonial rule. It also situates the tide of Muslim nationalism that gave rise to the nation of Pakistan within a terrain of nascent constitutionalism and its associated promises of representation. The post-colonial history of the Pakistani state is charted by reference to succeeding constitutions and the distribution of powers between the major branches of government that they augured. Where conventional histories often suggest that constitutionalism in Pakistan is to be solely understood by reference to a cycle of abidance and rupture, and in the oscillation between military and civilian rule, this volume also accounts for the many points of continuity between regime types. The contours of a broader constitutionalism come to light in the ways in which state power is wielded at different periods and in the range of contests – economic, political and cultural – through which some of this power is sought to be dispersed. Chapters on Rights, Federalism and Islam detail the contextual features of some of these contests and the normative, legal parameters through which they are provisionally settled.

Based on papers originally presented at a conference in Churchill College, Cambridge, this book discusses the pre-independence history of those areas of the South Asian sub-continent that territorially became the Pakistan of 1947. Titles in the series include "South Africa: A Modern History".

Presents a deeply contextualized account of public law and judicial review in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s 2018 general elections marked the second successful transfer of power from one elected civilian government to another—a remarkable achievement considering the country’s history of dictatorial rule. Pakistan’s Political Parties examines how the civilian side of the state’s current regime has survived the transition to democracy, providing critical insight into the evolution of political parties in Pakistan and their role in developing democracies in general. Pakistan’s numerous political parties span the ideological spectrum, as well as represent diverse regional, ethnic, and religious constituencies. The essays in this volume explore the way in which these parties both contend and work with Pakistan’s military-bureaucratic establishment to assert and expand their power. Researchers use interviews, surveys, data, and ethnography to illuminate the internal dynamics and motivations of these groups and the mechanisms through which they create policy and influence state and society. Pakistan’s Political Parties is a one-of-a-kind resource for diplomats, policymakers, journalists, and scholars searching for a comprehensive overview of Pakistan’s party system and its unlikely survival against an interventionist military, with insights that extend far beyond the region.

This book explains the postcolonial Indian polity by presenting an alternative historical narrative of the British Empire in India and India's struggle for independence. It pursues this narrative along two major trajectories. On the one hand, it focuses on the role of imperial judicial institutions and practices in the making of both the British Empire and the anti-colonial movement under the Congress, with the lawyer as political leader. On the other hand, it offers a novel interpretation of Gandhi's non-violent resistance movement as being different from the Congress. It shows that the Gandhian movement, as the most powerful force largely responsible for India's independence, was anchored not in western discourses of political and legislative freedom but rather in Indic traditions of renunciative freedom, with the renouncer as leader. This volume offers a comprehensive and new reinterpretation of the Indian Constitution in the light of this historical narrative. The book contends that the British colonial idea of justice and the Gandhian ethos of resistance have been the two competing and conflicting driving forces that have determined the nature and evolution of the Indian polity after independence.