The 26th Constitutional Amendment, eighteen months on: what actually changed for litigants

The 26th Constitutional Amendment was passed in October 2024. It redrew how Pakistan's constitutional jurisdiction is exercised and how judges are chosen. Much of the commentary since has been political. This briefing is not. It asks a narrower question: for a company, an individual or a government body actually litigating, what changed? The answer, as of March 2026, comes in three parts — forum, relief and bench — with the caveat that the 27th Amendment of November 2025 has altered the architecture again, and challenges to both amendments remain pending [status — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

What the amendment did

The core changes: a new Article 191A created constitutional benches within the Supreme Court, nominated by the Judicial Commission, with the Court's constitutional jurisdiction — including original jurisdiction under Article 184(3) — exercised only by those benches. Article 184(3) itself was amended to bar the Court from making an order beyond the contents of the petition before it, curtailing suo motu practice. A parallel restraint was inserted for the High Courts [provision — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. The Judicial Commission was recomposed to include parliamentarians alongside judges, and given a mandate to evaluate the performance of High Court judges. The Chief Justice of Pakistan is now appointed by a special parliamentary committee from among the three most senior judges, for a fixed three-year term; the first appointment under the new mechanism was made in October 2024. Provincial assemblies were permitted to opt for constitutional benches in their High Courts, and Sindh did so [TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

Then the ground moved again

In November 2025 the 27th Constitutional Amendment established a Federal Constitutional Court and transferred to it the constitutional jurisdiction that the 26th Amendment had assigned to the Supreme Court's constitutional benches. Two senior Supreme Court judges resigned in the aftermath, and the new court began functioning with its own chief justice [details and transitional arrangements — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. For litigants, the significance is structural: the constitutional-bench system the 26th Amendment built inside the Supreme Court operated for roughly a year before being superseded by a separate court. Petitions challenging the validity of both amendments were pending when this briefing was written; nothing below assumes their outcome.

What changed for litigants: forum

Before October 2024, a petition raising a constitutional question of public importance went to the Supreme Court, and the Court itself decided which bench heard it. Since the amendments, forum is a threshold battleground. Constitutional matters are routed to the designated forum — first the constitutional benches, now the Federal Constitutional Court — and the boundary between "constitutional" and "ordinary" jurisdiction is contested case by case. Through 2025 we saw regular benches and constitutional benches disagree about which of them could hear matters where a statutory appeal carried a constitutional question — a tax reference challenging the vires of a provision is the standard example. Expect a jurisdictional objection as the first response to any petition that touches the Constitution, and plead the basis of jurisdiction with care in the opening paragraphs, not as an afterthought.

What changed: relief

The restriction on orders beyond the contents of the petition sounds technical. It is not. Under the old dispensation, a petitioner could file narrow and hope the court would range wide; suo motu expansion sometimes delivered relief no one had pleaded. That era is closed. The prayer clause is now the outer boundary of what the court can give. Draft it accordingly: every form of relief you may need — declaratory, injunctive, consequential, transitional — must be in the petition, in the alternative if necessary. Amendments to pleadings can repair omissions, but amendment is discretionary and contested. The discipline runs the other way too: respondents should scrutinise prayer clauses, because relief that was not sought is relief that cannot be granted, and an over-broad interim order is now easier to attack.

What changed: the bench

Fixed terms and committee-based appointment mean leadership of the superior judiciary now changes on a published schedule rather than by seniority alone. Performance evaluation of High Court judges by the Judicial Commission, and the practice of transferring judges between High Courts, were live controversies through 2025 [litigation on transfers — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. For litigants the practical consequence is planning horizon: the composition of the bench likely to hear a long-running constitutional matter can now be projected — and will be projected by the other side. This is not a reason for cynicism; it is a reason for realism about timing. A case filed today on a major constitutional question will probably be decided by a bench whose membership can already be estimated, and settlement and filing calendars are being built around that fact.

What has not changed

The everyday machinery is intact. Article 199 remains the workhorse for commercial and regulatory judicial review in the High Courts — challenges to tax recovery, regulatory action, tender disputes — subject to the new restraint on relief beyond the pleadings. The ordinary civil and criminal appellate structure is untouched, as are the Code of Civil Procedure, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Qanun-e-Shahadat. Interim relief in commercial matters still turns on the same three questions it always did — prima facie case, balance of convenience, irreparable harm — and on the state of the docket in the particular High Court. For most business litigation, the amendments changed the destination of the constitutional fraction of the caseload, not the daily practice of the courts.

What this means for you

If your dispute has a constitutional dimension, resolve the forum question before filing, in writing, with reasons — and expect to defend that choice at the first hearing. Draft prayer clauses as if nothing outside them can ever be granted, because that is now the rule; include alternative and consequential relief at the outset. Where a statutory appeal and a constitutional challenge both exist, sequence them deliberately rather than filing both and hoping. Build realistic timelines into commercial decisions that depend on constitutional litigation, and account for the possibility that pending challenges to the amendments themselves alter the framework again. Above all, keep the constitutional and commercial tracks of a dispute separately managed: the rules of one no longer resemble the rules of the other, and cases now succeed or fail on that distinction being understood at the start.