In Pakistani litigation, the concept of the penniless prentice practitioner is a constant. To such a person, so too is that of the prosperous...
The first bit of career advice I can recall getting was this: “A great lawyer knows a lot about history, a lot about politics, a lot about...
On the face of it, the order of the majority is straightforward. It affirms what was already obvious from the constitution: elections must be held...
We begin with what appears to be the most obvious: when a legislative assembly is dissolved, elections must be held within ninety days. But, it...
There’s this quote that does frequent rounds on Pinterest, and the like: “Don’t judge me by the mistakes I’ve made, but by what I’ve...
Pakistan has had its fair share of men with a saviour complex. And it has been seen, always, as a damsel that needs rescuing from above: by those to...
In the end, the constitution will ensure that elections will happen. Governments may change, and politicians may party-hop, but the constitution...
If there’s one place where reality exists not as a line, but as a circle, it’s here. As the ruling party recoils towards its old haunt at...
The writer is a lawyer.In February of this year, I filed a request for information under the Right of Access to Information Act. It had been close...
The writer is a lawyer.It’s no coincidence that the Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, and the Pyramids all consist of triangles. When pressure is...
Sampson Brass, the crooked lawyer in Dickens’ ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ quips that “if there were no bad people, there would be no good...
The writer is a lawyer.I used to think that adjectives that tried to describe profound grief and joy were equally barren. Like trying to draw a...
Allow me to begin by stating that, in most situations, I wouldn’t insert myself into a debate that is already saturated by the opinions of Salman...
The writer is a lawyer.In 2018, I had just returned from grad-school in New York. As if having to give up on free-refills and ubiquitous central...
The Council of Islamic Ideology is rarely in the news for reasons it is likely to appreciate. That may just be in the architecture of its DNA. Those...
Karachi is a creature of the Frankensteinian variety – assembled by stitching together body parts from a dozen different corpses. Body parts that...
It was bad enough that he said it the first time. It is worse, yet, that after so many months where he might have attempted to understand the other...
Here I am - slumped in my chair, in the kind of way that will only hasten the curvature of my spine into an indignant question mark. I am transfixed...
When it comes to interpreting the constitution, invention tends to follow necessity very closely. One of the more notorious doctrines in the history...
‘Fire and thunder fill the night sky as Israel’s Iron Dome is tested’, proclaims the New York Times. The accompanying image is one that many...
The writer is a lawyer.In Pakistan, the Money Trail is in the eyes of the beholder. One of several pseudo-legal terms to have crept into common...
The writer is a lawyer.We are told that as the Titanic sank, amidst the clamour that ruptured the placid night sky, two sounds stood out. First, the...
The writer is a lawyer.In April of 2017, Indonesian artist, Adrian Syaf was fired from his job at Marvel Comics for slipping the numbers 5:51 and...
In 2004, the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went duck-hunting with the then vice president, Dick Cheney. A few weeks prior, the...
The writer is a lawyer.Once you’ve attacked a hospital, you have to really try quite hard to disappoint. For the average Pakistani lawyer, it’s...
The writer is a lawyer.In Pakistan, when it comes to music, you take what you can get. And more often than not, what you get is the backwashed...
These past few days have been heavy. The kind of dark Pakistani Days where numbness waxes and wanes over an agony that is all too familiar. Where...
Churchill’s Finest Hour seems behind him. Colston – whose ships carried some 80,000 slaves – now, himself, belongs to the water. Columbus is,...
As far as slogans go, it’s a modest proposal: Black Lives ‘Matter’. But for a nation whose first words were a declaration of this supposedly...
Every year, amid an assault of hieroglyphic acronyms, a new set of airbrushed headshots beams from panaflex standees at its future dominion.With...
With ‘Great’ wars come the expectation of great endings – decisive moments when pale, sickly people re-emerge, squinting at the sun as it...
The writer is a lawyer.A best-seller in the pop-up market of coping mechanisms is a type of joke with the punchline, ‘nature is healing itself’....
The writer is a lawyerUntil earlier this year, Imran Ali Chishti’s fame was restricted to a small quarter of Nankana Sahib, and the 79 followers...
In physics, two worlds co-exist: the big and the small. The principles that a falling apple taught Newton apply to apples, but not to the atoms that...
It started off as a crass joke: someone ate a ‘bat-sandwich’, and sent a billion and a half people into a frenzy. One hemisphere made Love in...
Pervez Musharraf’s 2006 autobiography opens with a bang. That is to be expected from a book that borrows its title from a Clint Eastwood...
