By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Justice Aminuddin Khan was sworn in on Friday as the first chief justice of Pakistan’s newly created Federal Constitutional Court, a landmark moment in a contentious judicial overhaul that the government says will ease the Supreme Court’s crushing caseload and restore public faith in the system.
The brief, carefully choreographed ceremony took place in the presidential palace, Aiwan-i-Sadr, one day after President Asif Ali Zardari signed the 27th Constitutional Amendment into law. On the dais with Justice Aminuddin sat President Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Yahya Afridi — an arrangement that underscored both the gravity of the occasion and the delicate balance of power the new court is meant to strike.
Also present were the army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza, along with much of the country’s political leadership: Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party; his sister Aseefa Bhutto-Zardari; Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar; National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq; and Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gillani.
After verses from the Quran were recited, President Zardari administered the oath in English. Justice Aminuddin, raising his right hand, repeated the words with measured cadence: “That I will not allow my personal interest to influence my official conduct or my official decisions. That I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and that in all circumstances, I will do right to all manner of people according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill will.”
When he finished, he shook hands with the president and took his seat. President Zardari had formally appointed him the previous day under the newly inserted Article 175C, read with Clause 3 of Article 175A, with the appointment to take effect from the moment of the oath.
Born in Multan in 1960, Justice Khan is a second-generation lawyer. He earned his law degree from University Law College, Multan, in 1984 and began practice under his father, Khan Sadiq Muhammad Ahsan. He was enrolled as an advocate of the Lahore High Court in 1987 and of the Supreme Court in 2001. For a decade he worked at Zafar Law Chambers in Multan before his elevation to the high court bench in 2011, where he heard civil cases on the Multan and Bahawalpur benches.
He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2019, taking oath from the then-chief justice, Asif Saeed Khan Khosa. Last November he was named head of the Supreme Court’s short-lived constitutional bench. Colleagues and court records describe him as a low-profile, methodical judge whose thousands of civil-law decisions have rarely been overturned on appeal. During his career he assisted prominent lawyers including Mian Nisar Ahmed and Umar Ata Bandial, the former chief justice.
Government officials have described the Federal Constitutional Court as the centerpiece of judicial reforms intended to lighten the Supreme Court’s docket, speed the hearing of constitutional petitions, and — in the words of ministers speaking on background — “strengthen judicial independence and credibility.”
Later on Friday, Justice Aminuddin was scheduled to travel to the Islamabad High Court, where six additional judges of the new court were to take their oaths in the high court auditorium. They include Justices Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Musarrat Hilali, Aamer Farooq, and Ali Baqar Najafi from the Supreme Court; Justice K.K. Agha of the Sindh High Court; and Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Rozi Khan Barrech.
The initial bench strength has been fixed by presidential order; any future expansion will require an act of Parliament. The ceremony had originally been planned for Thursday morning, then shifted to Thursday evening after a last-minute revision to the amendment bill forced its return to the Senate for fresh approval. After the Senate cleared the revised text, the event was postponed again to Friday. It was also moved from its intended venue. The government had envisaged housing the new constitutional court in the existing Federal Shariat Court building and relocating the Shariat Court to premises inside the Islamabad High Court complex.
Judges of the Federal Shariat Court objected to the abrupt move, according to officials’ familiar with the discussions, and took their concerns to Chief Justice Afridi. As a result, Friday’s oath-taking for the remaining judges was shifted to the high court itself. The rapid sequence of events — legislation one day, oath the next — has capped months of bitter debate over the amendments, which the governing coalition pushed through both houses of Parliament with the support of its allies.
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