The People’s Court: Political Dissonance, Private Media and Judicial Populism in Pakistan

When do courts embrace populism? Judicial populism can emerge in response to a dissonant political order. Where the configuration of political authority is fluid and contested, and political actors possess limited legitimacy, entrepreneurial judges can strategically use the media to legitimize expanded authority and new roles, as ostensible champions of the public interest. I argue that judges embrace populism i) strategically, in response to opportunities to expand judicial power in a fluid political environment, and ii) sincerely, as the political order's legitimacy crisis imbues judges with a belief in their role as superior representatives of the public interest. Populist judges rely on media coverage of their actions both inside and outside the courts, to cultivate a more direct, unmediated relationship with the public. Given their focus on self-presentation, media coverage will shape the choices populist judges make in i) case selection ii) the content of court decisions, and iii) off-bench public activity. In Pakistan, the dissonance caused by a constantly shifting distribution of power, and the emergence of an expanded private media, facilitated the rise of judicial populism. Pakistan is a compelling case as an increasingly populist judiciary transformed the country's political dynamics, bringing about the downfall of both civilian and military regimes within ten years. In this paper, I study the dynamics surrounding the rapid expansion of public interest litigation between 2005 and 2018, with a focus on the anti-corruption litigation that became the cornerstone of the judiciary's populist turn. I discuss the conditions that favoured the emergence of judicial populism, with critical implications for the nature of judicial behavior and jurisprudence. The paper shows how, in Pakistan’s Supreme Court, media coverage increasingly supplanted jurisprudential and procedural rules as the criteria for case selection, judges prioritized media-friendly populist rhetoric over discussion of legal precedent in their judgments, and judges’ public speeches, press conferences and even rallies became an increasingly commonplace feature of Pakistan’s politics. Through case analysis, newspaper archival research and semi-structured interviews, I trace how dissonance within Pakistan's volatile democracy, and an expanded private media, created new opportunities for the judiciary to cast themselves as the legitimate champions of the public interest, alter judicial role conceptions within the popular imagination, and disrupt the configuration of political authority to their advantage. Keywords: Judicial Politics, Populism, Media, Democracy, South Asia.