The Thursday decision by a seven-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan that exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, can return to Pakistan has changed the political configuration of the country.

There are two aspects of this development: legal and political. But while there is a ceaseless dynamic that informs both and by which they live out their relationship, in Pakistan’s peculiar constitutional and political trajectory the law has always kowtowed to the ham-handedness of politics.

With the SC having unshackled itself, that has started to change. The court’s newfound enthusiasm for judicial activism may have its own pitfalls but that is a separate debate. For now, suffice it to say that no one, not even the government, expected the court to pass any judgment other than what has been delivered.

Is the decision legal or political?

The court has determined, setting aside any debate on the ‘agreement’ under which the Sharif family had left Pakistan, that no one can contract out of his fundamental rights under the Constitution. A citizen cannot even do that of his own volition. Period. Therefore, in light of Article 15, which deals with freedom of movement, the Sharifs are free to return to Pakistan.

Sound enough, legally. But the timing is political, which busts the Dworkinian myth that legalism must be shorn of any reference external to the law. This is where law and politics meet, and this is why people expected the SC to give relief to the Sharifs. In passing the judgment that the honourable bench did, the judges have tried to find the equation that binds law and politics in a legal-normative framework in and through which politics must be played.

... contd.