EDITORIAL

To see the LUMS Student Law Review finally published is a matter of immense pleasure and satisfaction for all of us who have been involved in this project.

The LSLR began as flash in our minds. More than a year ago, we realized a fact something which is as strange as it is true: in a country of more than one hundred and seventy million people, more than a hundred thousand lawyers and thousands of law students, there is not even a single, regularly-published and widely available academic law journal.[1] It is only too obvious that this gap is one of the various reasons for the absence of a vibrant and informed legal discourse in the country.[2] It is this gap in our legal discourse which we at the Review seek to fill.

While our eyes are set high – with the aim of making a contribution to the national legal discourse and growing into a recognized peer-reviewed academic journal – we are starting small. We are well aware that this first issue is only a humble effort; but we hopeful that with each subsequent volume, as the experience of the editors increases and the pools of contributions available widens, the quality of the Review will improve. We start with this edition, because we know that somewhere one has to start.

This edition of the Review contains two sections: Section I presents three Articles and one Comment originally written by students as end-of-term papers. They were chosen by a panel of reviewers (both students and teachers) from amongst a pools of articles received from the LUMS law students. Our criteria for selection were two: one, the papers should be related to issues of Pakistani law; or, two, they should be stimulating for the legal imagination. [one-line summary of each article may be given here.]

Section II comprises republished articles which provide a survey of major currents of legal discourse in the country. The idea behind this section is that while we still do not a have a legal discourse going on in academic journals, we do see one emerging in newspaper op-eds. Nascent law journals would, therefore, do well to tap on this emerging legal discourse and, possibly, take it forward. In this volume, we present to our readers a glimpse of such newspaper-based legal discourse around two key Supreme Court cases: the NRO case, and the 18th Amendment case. While the articles published in this section have already, at various points in time, appeared in prominent newspapers, the systematic, chronological manner in which we have arrange them will certainly enhance the reader’s appreciation of the arguments and counter-arguments that the various authors have advanced. We also hopef that readers would find the editorial notes which we have added to each debate, of some use.

While the first edition of the review comprises only these two sections, we hope to add another two in subsequent editions of the Review. In Section III - the “Book Review” section - we will be publishing reviews of prominent books and articles pertaining to Pakistani law. Section IV would contain accurate summaries of landmark court judgments.

The LSLR will be published at least twice a year, both in print and on-line. That is, you can access all the articles published by just visiting our website http://www.lumslawreview.com/. We invite contributions for Sections I, III and IV of the next edition from all our readers – law students, lawyers, and anyone else. Contributions from students will be given preference, since our aim is to encourage writers of the future. Details of the submission process are given in a note at the end of the review.

We are very grateful to the faculty of the Law and Policy Department at LUMS for permitting us to proceed with this venture, and also for providing help whenever we need. We must also express our gratitude to Justice (r) Fazal Karim for his generous note of encouragement which is faithfully reproduced at the start of the Review.

Finally, a note from the current editors to our successors: The LSLR is the small way in which we have tried to contribute to a country and a university from which we got so much. But we could only come this far; now, only you can take it forward. Don’t abandon it. Make it your legacy to LUMS.

The Editorial Team

Umer Gilani

Zainab Qureshi

Haider Imtiaz

[1] It may be noted here that there are other some other fora where academic articles about the law are published, although cannot be considered widely available as well as regularly published. One of these is the Pakistan Law Review, published from the Pakistan Law College, Lahore. It has, in the past, published four volumes which contain articles of a very respectable quality. It is published only once a year. The PLD law reports also carry a Journal section devoted to articles about the law. Some 548 of these which were published between 1960 and 2010 are also available for online viewing to the subscribers of the PakistanLawSite. This collection of articles, some authored by eminent jurists of the country, is a less-known but invaluable resource for all Pakistani law students. Regrettably, the quality, particularly in later years, has not been consistent. Also, neither the PLR nor the PLD Journal are freely available online or web-searchable. As a result, despite their immense potential, their impact on public discourse about the law remains limited.

[2] Another reason for the lack of a vibrant legal discourse is the sorry state of legal academia in the country. The fact is that most (though not all) law schools in the county which teach Pakistan law possess neither the student base nor the academic resources which are necessary for maintaining high academic standards. The schools which are relatively better off in these terms are generally those which teach syllabi designed around UK law, not Pakistani law, and do not require students to academically engage with issues of Pakistani law. The result is that there is very little research work on Pakistani law is going on in the academia, while much more is needed.