Open letter: Kasuri advises restraint to incoming top judge

CJ Nisar ushered in reign of suo motu driven judicial activism and remained in the news 24/7


Our Correspondent January 18, 2019
The PTI is set to keep luring politicians to adopt its vision for change. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: Expressing his concerns and advising him gingerly on certain matters, former foreign minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri writes an open letter to newly-named chief justice of Pakistan Justice Asif Saeed Khosa.

Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri commences his note by felicitating Justice Asif Saeed Khosa on assuming the office of Chief Justice of Pakistan and says that the position he has risen up to is well-deserved keeping in view his academic background and legal experience.

Coming from a family of legal practitioners and himself being a qualified lawyer (though he did not practice law), Kasuri says it is in this context that he wanted to make a few submissions in Justice Khosa’s honour.

Kasuri writes that his views are not new and that he stood by what he had stated in his book, ‘Neither a Hawk, Nor a Dove’ published in 2016 where he had advocated "while the Supreme Court should continue to fulfill its strictly constitutional role, it should resist viewing itself as the platonic guardian justifying activist judicial intervention." (Pages 452-475).

He opined that the Supreme Court may only as a last resort justifiably exercise its suo motu powers as per the Constitution’s Article 184 (3). He has hoped that the new Chief Justice would not condone its sweeping scope and unbridled use which undermined the functioning of lower courts.

Kasuri writes that suo motus are ill-suited to fix the issues permanently as they only momentarily highlighted them, and made matters worse because judges were not experts in different fields of governance but their expertise lied in the field of law.

The former FM said he respected former Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar’s reputation for integrity, legal expertise and well-meaningness, but, even well-meaning actions, unless completely and thoroughly thought through, could wreak disastrous consequences.  Replicating CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry’s playbook, CJ Nisar ushered in a reign of suo motu driven judicial activism and remained in the news 24/7, often grabbing top headlines.

He said that it is well-known that judges should lead the life of a recluse; perhaps, for this reason the names of the judges in England did not appear in a telephone directory. He said it is axiomatic that that judges best speak through their judgments.

The former foreign minister says that CJ Nisar himself accepted that he had failed to put his own house in order. If he had done so, he would have been remembered favorably by history.

Kasuri reiterated that the recent judicial interventions in economic and fiscal policy spheres have led down the investor and business confidence precisely at a time when the prime minister is trying to lure investment and generate a business-friendly environment in the country.

In the end, Kasuri prayed for Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa’s success and hoped that he would leave a legacy which would make the following generation of lawyers and judges look up to his judgments with pride. ‘Only sound judgments stand the test of time’, Kasuri concluded.

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