Many countries have established both a constitutional court and a supreme court to handle different aspects of their legal systems, particularly separating constitutional matters from other judicial issues.
For instance, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, South Africa, and Poland have constitutional courts dedicated to ensuring laws comply with their constitutions, while their supreme courts handle civil and criminal cases.
France’s Constitutional Council oversees constitutional matters, whereas the Court of Cassation deals with criminal and civil cases. Similarly, Russia, Turkey, Colombia, South Korea, Chile, and Portugal follow this model, with constitutional courts focusing on constitutional disputes and supreme courts addressing broader legal matters.
This dual court system, prevalent in many European, Latin American, and African countries, allows for specialization in constitutional interpretation, unlike countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, where a single supreme court manages both constitutional and non-constitutional cases.
Though the concept of establishment of Constitutional Court is not new, but, the purpose of setting up the constitutional court differs in intent and purpose.
In Pakistan as against larger public good, the government is determined to neutralize the Supreme Court’s powers to challenge wrongdoing by the government, parliament, the Election Commission, and their associated institutions.
This effort aims to ensure the government’s survival and circumvent the Supreme Court’s decisions, particularly those restoring PTI as a fully functional party, resolving election disputes on merit, and reclaiming women and minority seats allocated as political spoils to the ruling parties.
Implementing the Supreme Court’s decisions would jeopardize the survival of the federal and Punjab provincial governments, as well as the Election Commission and the President’s office.
Qamar Bashir
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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