Pakistan Supreme Court: Jurisdiction, Appointments, and Removal

The Pakistan Supreme Court is the country’s highest court of appeal, seated in Islamabad and headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan. It hears final appeals from the High Courts in criminal and civil matters, but its reach is narrower than it was two years ago. The 26th Constitutional Amendment in late 2024 and the 27th Amendment in November 2025 stripped the court of its original, advisory, and suo motu jurisdiction and handed those powers to a new Federal Constitutional Court. If you are trying to understand the court today, you need to know both what it still decides and what has moved elsewhere.

How the Court Is Organized

Article 176 of the Constitution provides that the court consists of a Chief Justice and as many other judges as Parliament sets by law. The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act of 1997 has historically fixed the bench at around seventeen judges, including the Chief Justice, and Parliament can amend that number.¹

The permanent seat is in Islamabad. Registry offices in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta let petitioners file without traveling to the capital.

When the court is short of judges or needs extra capacity, the Chief Justice can request ad-hoc appointments under Article 182. An ad-hoc judge must be either a former Supreme Court judge who left the bench within the previous three years or a sitting High Court judge who meets the qualifications for Supreme Court appointment. The request goes through the Judicial Commission and requires presidential approval, and while sitting, the ad-hoc judge has the same powers as a permanent member of the bench.²

Who Can Become a Judge

Article 177 sets two routes to the bench. A candidate must be a Pakistani citizen who has either served as a High Court judge for at least five years in total, or practiced as an advocate before a High Court for at least fifteen years. Under Article 179, a judge holds office until the age of sixty-five unless they resign or are removed earlier.²

How Judges Are Appointed

Judicial appointments run through the Judicial Commission of Pakistan under Article 175A. The 26th and 27th Amendments expanded the Commission well beyond its original makeup, adding members from Parliament and the executive branch to a body previously dominated by senior judges. It now includes the Chief Justices and senior judges of both the Supreme Court and the Federal Constitutional Court, a jointly nominated judge, the Federal Minister for Law and Justice, the Attorney General, a nominee of the Pakistan Bar Council, four parliamentary members drawn from the National Assembly and Senate, and one additional member appointed by the Speaker of the National Assembly.³

For each vacancy, the Commission nominates one candidate by a majority of its total membership. The nomination goes to the Prime Minister, who forwards it to the President for formal appointment.³

Choosing the Chief Justice

The Chief Justice of Pakistan is no longer simply the most senior sitting judge. Under the amended Article 175A, a Special Parliamentary Committee of eight National Assembly members and four Senators selects the Chief Justice from among the three most senior judges of the Supreme Court. The committee must make its choice by a two-thirds majority at least fourteen days before the sitting Chief Justice leaves office.³ The Chief Justice now serves a fixed three-year term, or until reaching age sixty-five, whichever comes first. Before the amendments, the senior-most judge took the office automatically and served until standard retirement.

What Cases the Court Still Hears

Appellate jurisdiction under Article 185 is now the court’s core workload. The court hears appeals from High Court decisions in four main categories:

Criminal cases where a High Court reversed an acquittal and imposed a death sentence or life imprisonment
Cases where a High Court withdrew a trial from a lower court and convicted the accused
Contempt-of-court punishments imposed by a High Court
Civil disputes where the amount at stake is at least one million rupees and the High Court changed or overturned the lower court’s decision²

Cases that fall outside those automatic-appeal categories can still reach the court through a petition for special leave to appeal, which the Supreme Court grants at its own discretion. A large share of filings come through this route.

What Has Moved to the Federal Constitutional Court

If your case involves the constitutionality of a law, a dispute between the federal and provincial governments, or the enforcement of fundamental rights, the Supreme Court is no longer the forum. The 27th Constitutional Amendment, effective November 13, 2025, created a separate Federal Constitutional Court and transferred these matters to it.

The sequence matters for understanding the current position. Before the 26th Amendment, the Supreme Court held exclusive original jurisdiction under Article 184 over inter-governmental disputes and exercised advisory jurisdiction under Article 186 on presidential references.¹ The 26th Amendment first routed these functions into specialized Constitutional Benches within the Supreme Court through a new Article 191A. The 27th Amendment then omitted both Article 184 and Article 191A from the Supreme Court’s chapter altogether and placed the work in the Federal Constitutional Court.²

The Federal Constitutional Court has its own Chief Justice, selected through the same Special Parliamentary Committee process used for the Chief Justice of Pakistan.³ The Judicial Commission handles appointments for both courts, and the Supreme Judicial Council covers judges of both.⁴ Procedural rules and the working relationship between the two courts are still being shaped.

The End of Suo Motu at the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court’s ability to take up matters on its own initiative, once among its most visible powers, no longer exists at this court. Under the original Article 184(3), the Chief Justice could invoke proceedings without any petition when fundamental rights were at stake, and the court used that power in cases ranging from administrative failures to environmental harm.

The 26th Amendment added a proviso to Article 184(3) stating that the Supreme Court could not make orders, give directions, or issue declarations “on its own or in the nature of suo motu exercise of jurisdiction beyond the contents of any application filed.”² The 27th Amendment then omitted Article 184 from the Supreme Court’s chapter entirely. Fundamental rights jurisdiction, including anything resembling the old suo motu power, now sits with the Federal Constitutional Court.

How Judges Are Removed

Article 209 establishes the Supreme Judicial Council as the body that investigates and recommends the removal of judges from both the Supreme Court and the Federal Constitutional Court. The Council can act on information from any source, on a report from the Judicial Commission, or on a direction from the President.⁴

Grounds for removal are physical or mental incapacity, misconduct, and, since the 26th Amendment, inefficient performance of duties. The inefficiency ground is new and contested; critics have argued it opens a channel for executive pressure on judges whose rulings the government dislikes. After its inquiry, the Council reports its findings to the President, who may then remove the judge. No judge of either court can be removed through any other mechanism.⁴

Filing a Case

Most cases reach the Supreme Court through a Civil Petition for Leave to Appeal, which asks the court to accept an appeal that doesn’t qualify as a matter of right under Article 185(2). Petitioners must prepare a Paper Book containing certified copies of the lower court’s judgment, the grounds for appeal, and the evidence from prior proceedings, following the formatting required by the Supreme Court Rules. Filings start at the Registrar’s office in Islamabad or at a provincial registry, where staff review the submission for technical defects. If something is missing or improperly formatted, the Registrar issues an objection with a deadline to fix it. Once the filing clears scrutiny, it receives a case number and goes on the cause list for hearing.

Who Can File on Your Behalf

Petitioners must file through an Advocate-on-Record, a lawyer specifically registered to handle filings before the Supreme Court. Only an Advocate-on-Record can submit petitions, appeals, and other documents to the registry, even if a senior counsel is retained to argue the case in court. Recent reforms abolished the written examination previously required for registration, and advocates with at least five years of practice may now apply directly.⁵ Court fees vary by case type and are paid through court fee stamps at the time of filing.

1
Constitute Project. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
2
Pakistani.org. Constitution of Pakistan – The Supreme Court of Pakistan
3
Pakistani.org. General Provisions – The Courts
4
Pakistani.org. General Provisions Relating to the Judicature
5
PID. Press Detail