3 - Martial Rule

Summary

Chapter 3 charts the consolidation of judicial review during the first period of direct and indirect martial rule under the Ayub regime (1958–1968). Despite the military–bureaucratic authoritarianism of the Ayub era and the judicial validation of Martial Law, the courts managed to preserve the judicial review of bureaucratic action. The exercise of the Writ jurisdiction aligned with the priorities of a Martial Law regime that was attempting to subdue and co-opt a hitherto powerful bureaucracy. In the post-Martial Law phase, the promulgation of the 1962 Constitution provided the courts with the basis to consolidate the foundations of the Writ jurisdiction along three axes – formal constitutionalism, administrative law and procedural safeguards against the abuse of public order and state security laws – which have remained at the core of the superior courts’ definition of rule of law in the decades since.