Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> JURIST - The Paper Chase

Legal News

: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Pakistan may add Supreme Court seats to deal with backlog: law minister

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The Pakistani Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan said on Friday that the government was considering increasing the size of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to deal with the backlog of cases created by the Court's overturning of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) earlier this month. The decision removed the amnesty granted by the NRO to President Asif Ali Zardari, Awan, and 8,000 other members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. Awan went on to say that the establishment of proposed military courts would be unconstitutional as a means of reducing strain on the courts caused by trying those who engaged in recent fighting in the Northwestern tribal provinces. Last week, a Pakistani court issued an arrest warrant for Interior Minister Rehman Malik on corruption charges. The charges came two days after a special 17-member panel of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NRO is unconstitutional, paving the way for corruption charges to be brought against Zardari and other members of his government. The NRO was signed by former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in 2007 as part of a power-sharing accord allowing former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to return to the country despite corruption charges she had faced. The ordinance also applies to similar charges against politicians who were charged, but not convicted, of corruption between 1988 and 1999.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on December 26, 2009 (boomark / email).