A Critical Analysis of Judicial Reforms: Through the Prism of National Judicial Policy, 2009

Abstract

The judicial system of Pakistan, inherited from the colonial era, has been plagued with serious issues in providing timely justice to the common people culminating into law and order problems as well as the trust deficit among general public of the country. Various judicial reforms initiated by various Governments to combat the issues prevalent in the system and meet the changing legal requirements of the society yielded no substantial results. Since developing an understanding about why the previous reforms have not been able to deliver the desired results is a good initiative for building a more result oriented and robust policy (Bullock, Mountford & Stanley, 2001), this study aimed to explore the reasons for the lack of success or partial success of these reforms in the light of the Theory of policy diffusion and the Game theory of policy implementation by taking ‘National Judicial Policy, 2009’ as a case; which was the latest and most extensive effort to reform Pakistan’s judicial organ. This qualitative research attempting to gain insight into the phenomenon of judicial reforms through semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample of 15 Judges and lawyers from all the three tiers of judiciary i.e. Supreme Court, High Court and Session Courts has uncovered some interesting factors pertaining to policy making and implementation process of judicial reforms. In view of the respondents of this research, the influence of a foreign transactional institute and the lack of political will obstructed the implementation of this reform initiative. This study contributes to the policy making and implementation literature by way of explicating policy making and implementation process in the developing countries like Pakistan and helps identify the indigenous issues / problems in the process of various reform initiatives.