In November 2025, Justice Shah resigned from the Supreme Court of Pakistan in protest against the 27th Constitutional Amendment. The amendment created a new Federal Constitutional Court and removed the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over constitutional questions. In his resignation letter, he called the amendment a grave assault on the Constitution that placed the judiciary under executive control, and said that staying on would amount to “silent acquiescence in a constitutional wrong.” Justice Shah argues that today's autocracies rarely abolish constitutional forms. Instead, they hollow them out from within, using formally democratic procedures. In this talk, he will ask why judges give in and what it would take to protect judicial independence.
Biography: Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah is the Distinguished Chair in Constitutionalism & Justice at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fellow at Yale Law School. He served on the Supreme Court of Pakistan from 2018 until his resignation, latterly as its senior puisne judge, and briefly as Acting Chief Justice in 2025. He was in line to become Chief Justice but was passed over after the 26th Amendment. Earlier, he served as a judge of the Lahore High Court from 2009 and as its Chief Justice from 2016 to 2018, where he pioneered alternative dispute resolution centers, court automation, and judicial training reform. His jurisprudence is known for its contributions to constitutional law, human rights, climate and environmental justice, disability rights, and gender equality. He also authored Pakistan's first Supreme Court judgment on artificial intelligence. Before joining the bench, he was a founding partner of Afridi, Shah & Minallah and taught law for nearly two decades in Lahore. He studied law at the University of Cambridge and economics at the University of the Punjab.
Sponsored by the South Asia Institute, the Ambedkar Program in Global Constitutionalism, and the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia Law School.
