In a move that reveals a deep institutional rift, four Supreme Court judges have publicly expressed severe reservations regarding the procedural legality of the newly enacted Supreme Court Rules 2025. In a letter addressed to Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi, the justices—Mansoor Ali Shah, Munib Akhtar, Ayesha Malik, and Athar Minallah—condemned the approval process, dismissing a convened full court meeting as a mere “stamp of approval” for rules they claim were already unilaterally decided and officially notified without collective judicial input.
The judges highlighted a critical contradiction in the process. They pointed out that the Chief Justice had informed them via a letter on August 12 that the rules had already been approved through circulation and gazetted on August 9. Despite this, a full court was being summoned to discuss amendments, leading the judges to question the meeting’s purpose, asking how it could deliberate on amendments if it was not deemed necessary for the initial adoption of the rules themselves.
At the core of the dispute is a fundamental constitutional question. The judges cited Article 191, emphasizing that the power to make rules regulating the court’s practice and procedure is a power that must be exercised collectively by the court as an institution. They noted that the present rules were never placed before nor approved by the full court, leading them to conclude that the rules, in their current form, lack legitimate approval and cannot acquire a “binding legal status.”
The letter concluded with a firm legal opinion that the rules “suffer from both substantive and procedural illegality.” The judges strongly objected to the use of ‘circulation’—an administrative tool for routine matters—as the vehicle for establishing the foundational governance architecture of the Supreme Court. They asserted that unless the full court itself had expressly authorized this method, the Chief Justice alone could not unilaterally resort to it, casting serious doubt on the validity of the entire process.
