IDEAS Book Talk
IDEAS is pleased to invite you to attend our upcoming Book Talk & Book Signing event with Dr. Yasser Kureshi, author of the book ‘Seeking Supremacy: The Pursuit of Judicial Power in Pakistan‘. The book talk will be moderated by IDEAS Research Fellow Maryam S. Khan and co-organised with Hast-o-Neest and Bazm-e-Alam, and will be followed by a book signing by the guest speaker.
Date: Monday, 9th December 2024
Time: 05:30 PM
Venue: Hast-o-Neest, 3 Iftikhar Ahmed Shariff Colony, Iftikhar Ahmad Malik Road, Gulberg 2, Lahore, Punjab
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/GfCUMrYPYfcVQ32f9
Guest Speaker:
Dr. Yasser Kureshi is a Department Lecturer in South Asian Studies. Working at the intersection of political science and public law, his research looks at the politics of unelected state institutions outside democratic contexts. In particular he studies the military and the judiciary and their impact on constitutional configurations and democratic outcomes in authoritarian and post-authoritarian states.
About the Book:
The emergence of the judiciary as an assertive and confrontational center of power has been the most consequential new feature of Pakistan’s political system. This book maps out the evolution of the relationship between the judiciary and military in Pakistan, explaining why Pakistan’s high courts shifted from loyal deference to the military to open competition, and confrontation, with military and civilian institutions. Yasser Kureshi demonstrates that a shift in the audiences shaping judicial preferences explains the emergence of the judiciary as an assertive power center. As the judiciary gradually embraced less deferential institutional preferences, a shift in judicial preferences took place and the judiciary sought to play a more expansive and authoritative political role. Using this audience-based approach, Kureshi roots the judiciary in its political, social and institutional context, and develops a generalizable framework that can explain variation and change in judicial-military relations around the world.