He recalled that the so-called Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan, supported by the public and the media, played a pivotal role to restore the country’s judiciary and uphold its constitution.

The Lawyers’ Movement he referred to was the popular mass protest initiated by lawyers in Pakistan over the suspension of Iftikhar as the chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court by the former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf in March 2007.

Four months into the protest, Musharraf reinstated Iftikhar as the chief justice.

Iftikhar said Pakistan’s supreme court continued to stress good governance by providing complete protection of human rights to all citizens and directing the executive to implement the law sturdily.

He said this at the Malaysian Bar’s symposium on “Constitutional Law: Rule of Law in Jeopardy?” at the Raja Aziz Addruse Auditorium here today.

Another panellist, Justice David Alfred, said the constitution was the foundation of judicial independence of a nation and judges must apply the law without fear, favour or prejudice.

Alfred, a Malaysian lawyer now serving a contract as a High Court judge in Fiji, said the Fijian Constitution ensured the courts and all judicial officers were independent of the legislature and executive branches of the government.

“They are subject only to the constitution and law,” he said.

He said this was the lodestar for any serving judge.

Alfred, who was one of the five speakers on the panel, also said the Fijian constitution barred any person from interfering in the judicial functioning of the courts.

However, he said, it was inevitable that an independent judiciary would have to interact with other branches of the government.

“Every time a court pronounces a piece of legislation to be unconstitutional, it is interacting with the legislature and not encroaching on the law,” he said.

Similarly, he said, every time a court judicially reviewed a ministerial decision, it was interacting with the executive.

“The court does not attempt to supersede the ministerial decision by imposing its own,” he added.