Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza | Pakistan

Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza on Saturday tendered his resignation as a judge of the Lahore High Court (LHC), becoming the first judge to resign from any high court after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was enacted into law. According to family sources, his resignation letter stated that in light of the latest amendment to the Constitution, he could not continue in good conscience. Justice Mirza was appointed as an additional judge of the LHC in March 2014, and his superannuation was due on March 6, 2028. He is the son of late Justice Zia Mehmood Mirza, a former Supreme Court judge who delivered the famous and only dissenting opinion among seven judges in the case pertaining to the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto’s government by then-president Farooq Ahmad Khan Laghari in 1996. The judge had held that Laghari’s move was unjustified and there was no evidence suggesting there was a breakdown of constitutional order to justify exercising his powers under Article 58(2)(b), which allowed the president to d...

Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza of the Lahore High Court has resigned in the wake of the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment, becoming the latest senior member of the judiciary to protest the changes.