Justice Jawwad S Khawaja to assume charge of CJP on Aug 17

ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain has granted approval to the appointment of Justice Jawwad S Khawaja as Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP).

Justice Jawwad S Khawaja will assume the charge of his new office with effect from August 17, as the incumbent CJP Justice Nasir ul Mulk is set to retire on August 16.

President Mamnoon Hussain approved Justice Khawaja’s appointment as the top judge of Pakistan on the advice of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Profile

Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja was born on 10th September, 1950, in Wazirabad, District Gujranwala. He did his graduation in Arts in the year 1971 from FC College, Lahore and LL.B from the Punjab University Law College, Lahore in 1973. He then obtained a Masters (LL.M) degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975.

He started his legal practice as an advocate of the Lahore High Court in 1975 and was a partner at Cornelius, Lane and Mufti, one of the largest law firms in Pakistan. In 1999, he became a judge of the Lahore High Court but resigned in 2007 in response to the maltreatment of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on 9 March.

He joined the Law and Policy Department of the Lahore University of Management Sciences in August 2007 and served as the head of department from October 2007 to May 2009, when he joined the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Some of the important Supreme Court decisions Justice Khawaja has been part of include: the SHCBA case, in which the Court declared the Emergency imposed by President General Pervez Musharraf on 3 November 2007 to be unconstitutional and restored most of the judges who were forced to vacate office that day; the NRO case, in which the Supreme Court declared the National Reconciliation Ordinance to be void; and the Makro-Habib case, in which the Court ordered the wholesale giant Makro-Habib to restore the playground in Saddar Karachi on which it had established its outlet.