administration of [Muslim law] by judges … belonging to th[ose] … schools’. Constitutional Debates (Revisited) In 1952 the Basic Principles Committee re-convened to draft a ‘revised’ report, addressing (but also reframing) these traditionalist/Islamist suggestions. Led by Khwaja Nazimuddin—who resigned as Pakistan’s Governor-General to become Prime Minister following the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951—this second report noted that Pakistan’s Head of State should be a Muslim while, at the same time, continuing to embrace the Objectives Resolution as a non-binding constitutional preamble. It also added greater specificity to the overall allocation of parliamentary seats, noting that Pakistan’s eastern and western wings should enjoy exactly equal numbers. Intervening Debates (Revisited) Again, the pattern of dissent was two-fold. Western provinces like the Punjab, while appreciating the principle that Pakistan’s parliamentary seats should be divided equally between its eastern and western wings (notwithstanding East Pakistan’s overall majority), opposed the distribution of seats within West Pakistan. And, somewhat predictably, the ‘religious’ lobby representing Groups 1 and 3 insisted that their specialist advice regarding the ‘Islamic’ status of state-based laws should be ‘binding’. Prime Minister Nazimuddin responded to the concerns articulated by Groups 1 and 3 with a proposal that the Head of State should simply constitute an ‘advisory’ Board of Ulema to rule on the ‘repugnancy’ of individual laws (with the unanimous vote of this Board forcing impugned laws back to the legislature for amendment). But, eventually, the Constituent Assembly decided to reject this accommodation of Group 1, turning instead to a proposal in
locus of power has generally been vested in parliament. The courts have not sought to claim autonomous power (notwithstanding the persistent hopes of Groups 1 and 3, the constitutional interventions of General Zia-ul-Haq, and the court’s attack on ‘Islamizing’ executive ordinances); they have, instead, stressed the preeminence of the legislature (however lacking in ‘consensus’ it might be). In his reading of prevailing trends pertaining to the Objectives Resolution, Dieter Conrad reinforces this conclusion. With respect to divine authority, for instance, Conrad notes that ‘the direct recipient of [this] delegated authority is not … a monarchical head of state but the people’. Of course the degree to which these ‘people’ might take up this mantel is variable (as I have written elsewhere). But, with respect to Pakistan’s constitutional jurisprudence, the principle itself is clear: primacy lies with ‘the people’. As Conrad points out, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly (1952) took a key decision regarding ‘the power of interpretation’ vis-à-vis shari‘a, and ‘this decision has remained the common basic structure [for every] constitution’ thereafter. ‘The power to … bring all legislation in accordance with “the injunctions of Islam”, he explains, ‘was vested in parliament as the final interpreting authority’. ‘The general disposition’ of the state was, thus, ‘to treat Islamic principles as a matter [for] the future’ and ‘to entrust their realization to the … political responsibility of the legislature’. Whereas Kennedy and Lau see a rising star for Pakistan’s ‘Islamic’ judiciary, in other words, I join Conrad in seeing a judicial record infused with the primacy of parliament. This emphasis is fragile. But, constitutionally, it remains empirically unmistakable. This chapter has traced the extent to which Pakistan arrived at a formula of effective parliamentary pre-eminence in 1956 and, despite two superseding constitutional texts and several more constitutional amendments, this basic formula was refined but not reversed. The