Pakistan's Constitutionalism in an Age of Terror

Abstract

In the first days of January 2015, Pakistan’s Parliament passed the 21st amendment to the Constitution,1 reversed the government’s stand against capital punishment, and enacted a National Action Plan advertised as a new approach to counter terrorism. In an effort to “eliminate terror from our soil,” in Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif’s words, thousands have been arrested,2 some already in prison found themselves, ex post facto, to be condemned to death,3 and a wide range of longstanding violent political disputes have been wrapped into this new policy.4 In a lengthy and far-reaching judgment upholding Parliament’s prerogative to amend the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in August 2015 that the 21st amendment could stand.5 Not for the first time, and no doubt not for the last, the state—including Parliament, the military, and the judiciary—has upheld anti-terror policies that challenge the fundamental rights precepts of the Constitution.