THE ROLE OF THE JUDICIARY IN ADVANCING CLIMATE JUSTICE IN PAKISTAN: A CASE STUDY OF LEGHARI V. FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

Pakistan’s climate vulnerability has collided with chronic implementation gaps, inviting judicial orchestration of executive action. This article develops a doctrinal–empirical case study of Leghari v. Federation of Pakistan, arguing that the Lahore High Court transformed constitutional guarantees of life and dignity into a managerial remedy that accelerated delivery against the National Climate Change Policy (2012) and its 2014–2030 Framework through a time-bound Climate Change Commission, designated focal persons, and iterative compliance review. Reconstructing the remedial architecture and coding its linkages to policy tasks, we find material progress on priority actions and diffusion of Leghari’s vocabulary—precaution, intergenerational equity—into apex-court adjudication and administrative practice, including D. G. Khan Cement Co. v. Government of Punjab (2021 SCMR 834) and statutory consolidation via the Pakistan Climate Change Act, 2017. Situated within global trends and market-salience evidence on climate litigation, the Pakistani trajectory exemplifies “implementation-oriented constitutionalism”: courts police constitutional minima and catalyze coordination while preserving democratic choice over means. The contribution is twofold: an original reconstruction of Leghari’s legal architecture and an assessment of its institutional afterlife, clarifying what court-centered climate governance can—and cannot—accomplish in a resource-constrained federation.