HIGH COURT BAR ASSOCIATION MULTAN

HIGH COURT BAR ASSOCIATION MULTAN <!--[if gte mso 10]> HIGH COURT BAR ASSOCIATION MULTAN Address By Mr. Justice Muhammad Haleem, Chief Justice of Pakistan [26-11-1988] Mr. Wasim Sajjad, Minister for Justice and Parliamentary Affairs; Esteemed Chief Justice; Distinguished Judges; Mr. Muhammad Akram Sheikh, President of the High Court Bar Association, Multan; Members of the High Court Bar Association, Multan; Ladies and Gentlemen! It is an occasion of great satisfaction to be amongst the members of my fraternity to which I belong, and whose dignity is uppermost in my mind which it is my duty to preserve and protect. I hold the fraternity not in the restricted sense, but in the wider context of being a brotherhood as it is understood internationally. Indeed, I feel very happy to be amongst you. 2. Plato believed that in an ideal system of Government philosophers would be "kings". In our era, the ideal has to be reinterpreted by saying that statesmen should be scholarship-oriented lawyers. The lawyers in present day world support the cause of contemporary questions in order to exert the influence for which their scholarly position gives them the opportunity. In the course of this kind of scholarly participation, the obligation of lawyers is to carry scholarship into participation. The lawyers occupy a strategic position which imposes upon them obligations of sharing in leadership of the community. The good activities in a community are its civilizing influences. 3. The very term legal profession implies a high level of social prestige to which many occupational groups aspire and which lawyers clearly enjoy in our society. Such social status emerges in part out of the special skills and knowledge that are allegedly peculiar to legal profession. Affirmation of these special competencies is found in the organization of legal and judicial institutions in Pakistan. 4. I have noted, with a sense of appreciation, another aspect of legal professionalism, that is, self-regulation. The lawyers represent not only clients' interests, but also represent the legal system as officers of the Court. This implies some professional responsibility to serve the society at large. 5. Beyond the status enjoyed by professions generally, tie legal profession derives great power from its control over the law which is of crucial importance to the political and social system in Pakistan. The tendency for basic social issues to become questions of law implies an obvious role for lawyers in the determination of public policy. Practising lawyers do not merely render to the community a social service, but they are also considered a part of the governing mechanism of the state. 6. It has rightly been said that lawyers are the primary gate-keepers to the administration of justice. Their prominence remains well-established in both elective and appointive offices. Lawyers are prominent in politics. Aside from the power that accrues to roles with obvious political influence, the public power of the legal profession stems largely from the part lawyers play in applying and interpreting the law, in advising private clients in the settlements of legal matters, and thereby in the shaping of law in action. Lawyers enjoy the credit of transforming real-life events into a legal formulation. 7. It has been found that access to the legal profession has been quite open to those seeking upward mobility. Alexis de Tocqueville, who laid the philosophical foundation of political democracy in the United States of America, pointed out in his 1835 description of Democracy in America, that "If I were asked where I placed American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it occupies the judicial bench and bar". Indeed, legal profession has been portrayed as a path to higher status in a society that leads to upward mobility. 8. The members of legal profession have contributed significantly, everywhere, to the growth of the concept of legal culture. This concept provides very useful insights into close relationship between law and political authority. It has now been universally accepted that law is always a "principle" in one part and "power" in another part. Law depends on the political power of the state while providing a necessary component of legitimacy to governmental authority. In many modern states, this dualism is expressed as constitutionalism or an equivalent theory of how to share the existence of both adequate power to govern and effective limits on the exercise of those powers. I need here to emphasise that popular acceptance and participation are indispensable if law is to play an effective role in a democratic society. Law must at least appear to do justice and effectively carry out its other functions. Law should be the antithesis of a certain practice in non-democratic societies contained in the 'expression: "For my family, everything; "For my friends, justice; For my enemies, the law". 9. In my opinion, law should continue to be the object of reverence for the society as a whole. The "rule of law" is important for all democratic societies because it incorporates those internal attributes of a legal culture that flesh out its contours and thus better accounts for the performance and consequence of its legal system. Among the attributes commonly associated with the "rule of law", mention is specifically made of constitutionalism, legalism, professionalism, pluralism, and the unique relationship between law and politics. Constitutionalism implies that every nation should have a Constitution in the sense of having a set of fundamental values, a specification of what powers the Government may or may not exercise, and an enumeration of basic human rights that people retain. The concept of constitutionalism promotes the idea that public life and public policy should be fair, open, consistent, and protective of personal, social, religious, and political liberty. Constitutionalism has also come to stand for an enduring and reciprocal relationship between citizens and the Government. 10. In regard to legalism, a common feature is that all judges of higher Courts take an oath to defend and to uphold the Constitution. The main function of legal rules is to resolve disputes and regulate human conduct in a manner that helps maintain order and dispenses justice. This process is known as legalism. 11. The idea of legal pluralism enables the members of legal profession to understand and accept the variations often found in the operation of legal institutions. Legal institutions do not operate abstractly. There is substantial discretion, and that discretion is often exercised in response to regional, local, or transcendent professional norms. Legal pluralism implies the presence of regional and local differences in the way in which the citizens use the Courts and respond to the decisions of the Courts. And law is inextricably linked with Government and the political process, a linkage that is specially distinctive wherever legal institutions have assumed an important role. 12. I would like to emphasize the important symbolic role of law and the attachment that people have to it, and the high degree to which the spirit of law has permeated the human society. The spirit of law gradually spirals beyond the walls of Courts of law into the core of society where it descends to all classes of people. The legal culture implies a high degree of citizens' support. It casts a duty on the members of legal profession to create social awareness among the people and to make them rights-conscious. The members of legal profession are being called upon, in democratic settings, to mobilize the law in order to protect perceived infringements of the rights of people. 13. Distinguished Members of the Bar: This is the time to appreciate that the law and the legal culture must deal with many new claims of right and justice. Thus, as the system and its values on which the legal culture rests become more complex, the legal culture will have to become more realistic and more open to mediated solutions between competing members. 14. The society is not unmindful of the important role being played by advocates. It is obvious that advocacy is more than the mere application of a set of technical rules and doctrines on behalf of certain interests. First, it is often necessary for the advocate to define and identify the client's interest. Second, effective advocacy requires an understanding of the purposes of the rules or doctrines the lawyer is seeking to invoke on behalf of his client. Third, the kind of advocacy the society allows a lawyer is limited by professional canons, personal ideas, and by a correct appreciation of the role of lawyers in the social system. All these limits vary from time to time, and from context to context, they cannot be understood without a regard for the teachings or moral philosophy, economics, sociology, history and anthropology. None of these is meant to obviate a need for training in the skills of advocacy. The structure of law is embedded in the intricate details of professional rules, and a mastery of those details is essential for success in this profession. 15. The quality of legal profession ultimately depends on the depth and imagination of its members. Serious intellectual discussions among colleagues may some times be considered desirable. The ostensible function of an institution known as the "Legal Theory Workshop" is acquiring wide acceptance in certain developed countries. The object of this Workshop is to provide lawyers, with a forum to present their work in progress, with an eye towards revision and further improvement. Talk about recent legal issues equips the lawyers with skills having direct relevance to their profession. Talk about legal issues is also a form of continuing education, a source of intellectual renewal and growth, in which the members of legal profession can be motivated to re-examine their premises; learn of new developments in other fields, and combat the narrowness that often accompanies the monotony of doing the same type of work every day. Thus they can overcome the danger of becoming obsolete and may be persuaded to broaden their focus in order to attain a measure of expertise in an increasingly complex world. It seems imperative, if the members of legal profession are interested in doing justice to their profession and to themselves, to find ways to enlarge their visions and renew their critical capacities. 16. With these comments, I wish to express my thanks to you for inviting me here and wish you the best of luck and hope that you will do your level best to upgrade the quality of legal profession. ***