I have been led to believe that law is a privileged profession practiced by thoughtful, independent-minded and educated individuals who have a distaste for injustice and government excess.

It is indeed true that lawyers have historically been a force for progressive change, revolting against tyranny (French Revolution), campaigning against genocide (the Genocide Convention was championed by a lawyer) and leading the way in abolishing unjust institutions such as slavery (Abraham Lincoln). In fact, we do not need to look to the West for examples: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was a lawyer. A more recent example of legal bravado can be seen in the lawyer-instigated revolution three years ago that overthrew an unelected leader and restored a wrongly deposed judiciary.

Recently, however, as a constant flow of thoughtless and wasteful petitions have been filed in the Pakistani high courts, I have struggled with this popular notion of the lawyer as a check against autocracy. To me it appears that some members of the legal profession in Pakistan have taken an active decision to discredit this ideal and turn a reasonably respectable occupation into a saleable commodity that seeks to manipulate the judicial system to promote narrow and harmful agendas.

Although the roots of my confusion were sown a few months ago when I heard about Pakistani lawyers trying to ban Facebook, and therefore limiting the very fundamental right that lawyers cherish, freedom of expression; the greater shock for me came when I read earlier this week about an advocate who submitted a petition to the Lahore High Court seeking to transfer the power to act ascommander-in-chief of the armed forces (and by implication, the powers to make war and peace) from the Head of State (President) to the Chief of Army Staff, because doing so “would enable the army to take prompt action when required to respond to any attack on the territorial borders of Pakistan”.

In other words, the petitioner proposes that the welfare of Pakistan will be better served if the power to declare war should (paradoxically) rest with the institution that is designed to and has the greatest incentive to engage in warfare, having demonstrated this on more than one occasion since 1947. Quite apart from the fact that the petition is based on the naïve assumption (or deliberate misstatement) that it was the rather weak civilian government that somehow tied the hands of our docile military in responding to the Osama Bin Laden operation in Abbottabad, I query whether the petitioner can provide any evidence to support the point that such a change is actually in the interests of Pakistan. Probably not.

On the contrary, there is not a single successful democracy today in which the final decision to go to war rests with the military chief. How then can such a blatantly partisan petition aimed at violating constitutional separation be reconciled with the view that the legal fraternity in Pakistan is a friend to democracy? More importantly, does this petition signal that the services of lawyers can now be purchased by anyone who wishes to use the courts to promote political theatre? Such activity raises questions not just of legal professional ethics but also whether the proponents of such litigation are deliberately seeking to undermine the good work of other Pakistani lawyers who are actually promoting the advancement of democracy and civic liberties in Pakistan. Whilst the rest of the world moves to strengthen constitutional democracy, it is therefore disappointing to see that some lawyers in our country are busy ensuring that the already very fragile powers held by democratic institutions in Pakistan, for which some of their colleagues made significant sacrifices in 1998, are further eroded. Perhaps the agenda of this petition is to obtain political leverage as a bargaining chip or to create a distraction to divert blame away for what happened in Abbottabad from certain institutions.

Other motives could be publicity or simply a desire to express frustration at the status quo. If it is the latter I do sympathize and I agree that in some instances, the courts can be designed to deal with genuine political complaints to prevent political excess. However, filing petitions that lack any merit and that seek to pervert the separation of power is not such a bona fide use of the judicial system.

It is my rather optimistic hope that the high courts will throw out such frivolous cases and impose punitive sanctions on those that persist in using the court for political gain. A strong court would go even further and state that these are non-justiciable political questions that a lower court cannot resolve.

Clearly, there is enough injustice in this country that the very scarce resources of the legal system should be used to actually right wrongs rather than engage in such politically motivated and self-serving pursuits.