In addition to providing an overview of the book and its methodological orientation, the introductory chapter highlights three key facets of constitutionalism in Pakistan. Firstly, it is through the consistent development of the judicial review of administrative action, even under military rule, that Pakistan’s superior courts have acquired the power to mediate inter-state tensions. Secondly, the courts’ increasing capacity to mediate state–society dialectics – arising out of the demands of various groups and classes on the periphery of the state – also had much of its basis in the judicial review of executive action. Thirdly, Pakistan’s courts strategically re-situated themselves from time to time and re-fashioned their role in accordance with fundamental shifts in constitutional politics, state structure and state-society dialectics charted in this book.

While the ambitions of this book are by and large localised – to explain the historical evolution of public law and judicial review in Pakistan – it is hoped that such a grounded description will also provide an insight into the theorisation of the judicialisation of politics worldwide. The concluding chapter situates the history of judicial review in Pakistan within three broad frameworks that are generally employed within comparative public law literature for describing and analysing the judicialisation of politics in a given polity. Ultimately, however, this book argues that a deeply descriptive account of the non-linear expansion of judicial power in Pakistan may help highlight how fluid and dynamic the process of judicialisation can be. Furthermore, at any given time a range of factors and players may contribute to the expansion of and/or resistance to a more assertive judicial role. Therefore, this book represents a call to eschew over-reliance on global frameworks to explain and evaluate the increasing significance of courts anywhere and everywhere, but instead to situate the politics of particular courts in specific historical and political contexts.