Justice Mussarat Hilali retires from Supreme Court

She was a signatory to rulings removing PTI's electoral symbol and overturning its reserved seats verdict

ISLAMABAD:

Justice Mussarat Hilali, whose tenure on the Supreme Court (SC) was marked by a series of controversial rulings, retired on Friday after serving as a judge of the apex court since her elevation from the Peshawar High Court (PHC) during the tenure of former chief justice Umar Ata Bandial.

Justice Hilali's name was recommended by the then senior puisne judge of the SC, Qazi Faez Isa. In May 2023, he wrote a letter to all members of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP), proposing the elevation of PHC Chief Justice Hilali and Sindh High Court (SHC) Chief Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh to the SC.

The JCP subsequently approved Justice Hilali's elevation to the apex court.

Justice Hilali was known to be a member of the Qazi Faez Isa camp in the SC. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawyers considered her an anti-PTI judge because of her controversial decisions.

She was a signatory to the judgment that deprived PTI of its party symbol ahead of the elections. Justice Hilali was also a member of the bench that overturned the SC's judgment declaring that PTI was entitled to reserved seats.

She also dissented from the majority order suspending the SC judgment, which had held that the trial of civilians in military courts was unconstitutional. Subsequently, she was among the majority of judges who upheld the trial of civilians in military courts.

Commenting on her career, advocate Abdul Moiz Jaferii said that there had been many judges in Pakistan's history who were remembered for a single decision they made during their careers. Sometimes, he said, that decision was so appalling that the other members of the bench were also remembered for it. He noted that only one such proceeding had ever been televised.

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"Justice Hilali holds this rare place in judicial history. She was part of Qazi Faez Isa's bat symbol verdict, watched by the entire nation as she side-kicked Justice Qazi's hijacking of an election. And that is all she will be remembered for. Her health prevented her from holding court for much of her tenure, and perhaps from doing further damage to the body of law," he added.

It was learnt that despite being offered an appointment to the Federal Constitutional Court by the executive, Justice Hilali did not accept it.

A senior lawyer believed that Mussarat Hilali was an ordinary judge with nothing exceptional about her. However, when the full court was considering the letter written by six Islamabad High Court judges, she had the courage to speak about judicial interference.

Barrister Asad Rahim Khan said it is rare that a single judge be on the side of so many damaging, regressive, and poorly reasoned verdicts as Justice Musarrat Hilali.

He further stated that this is made starker by the fact that her entire tenure hasn’t a single decision that developed or even clarified the law – whether that be on the civil, criminal, or constitutional side.

"Instead we have a string of bare signatures validating military trials of civilians, stripping the country’s largest party of its electoral symbol and thus disenfranchising the voter, and handing reserved seats to the same parties that lost them," he said.

He added that we don’t know, beyond her agreement with the majority, how Justice Hilali individually reasoned her way to such destructive verdicts, because she never wrote detailed judgments in any of the above.

Barrister Rahim also said that admirers say her career marked many firsts, but those include becoming Pakistan’s first woman jurist to think that civilians before military tribunals are guaranteed the right to a fair trial. Might actual justice trump empty tokenism."