| Pakistan's constitutional order has faced several disruptions over the past sixty years. The latest disruption occurred in 2007 when President General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in the country and suspended the constitution. Again, in the aftermath of the American Special Forces' operation at Osama bin Laden's hideout on May 2, 2011, the country came close to a military coup d'etat as the relationship between the government and the army considerably deteriorated. Apart from the threat of a military coup d'etat, the constitutional order of Pakistan has faced, directly or indirectly, two more threats: the Islamists' struggle for Sharia and the anti-terrorism legal regime. In the summer of 2007, the Islamists of the Red Mosque revolted against the democratic constitutional system and demanded its replacement with Sharia. Around the same time, human rights activists challenged the anti-terrorism legal regime on the account that it violated constitutional rights and guarantees. Just as these political developments threatened the fledgling constitutional order, the juridical debate on the problem of constitutional disruption did not gain the necessary sense of urgency in the country. In this dissertation, I embark upon a critical and theoretical study of these political developments. To do this, I first analyze the decisions of the Supreme Court in various cases of constitutional disruption. Second, I search for constitutional reasons of the Islamists' demand for the abolition of the constitutional order. Third, I identify and interpret the nature of law of high treason in the constitutional order and its perceived role in forestalling constitutional disruption. Finally, I take up the anti-terrorism legal regime from a genealogical and comparative perspective to analyze its disruptive impacts on the democratic character of the constitutional order. |
