CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF PAKISTANCourse Description: Constitutions have come to be regarded as the collective consensus and ultimate benchmark of a nation's aspirations and ideals. They are considered the first guardians of individual and collective rights and the supreme arbiters in disputes between the organs of a state. They are the mirror of the ideological hopes of the past, the litmus test for the current affairs of the present and the mirror for the future. The alchemy of their creation and interpretation is suffused with politics, and a nation's politics are greatly influenced by its constitutional disputes. This course attempts to outline the history of constitutional development in Pakistan through a detailed analysis of landmark cases that serve as distinct milestones through this journey. We will examine at length not only the jurisprudence of the sentences but also the unique social and political environment that influenced them and also how these sentences in turn ended up influencing that environment. A better assessment of the complexity of this evolution can occur through the development of a comparative perspective. Only by looking at other similar paths can we better discern whether ours was more tortuous or less arduous and, to this end, the precursor to this path, Constitutional Law 1 (Constitutional Law of the United Kingdom and the United States), took a close look at two other systems of government. The US system is important as it can arguably boast the most sophisticated and well-developed constitutional discourse and one of the oldest constitutions. The British system is intriguing, as it exists successfully without the frills of a written constitution. What exists instead is a very different system of governmental checks and balances and so its study provides an interesting counterweight to the US system, which revolves around a written constitution. Both of these systems also deserve to be studied, as they have contributed significantly to the theoretical evolution of our constitutional framework. Indeed, this relevance is amplified as we currently move irresolutely between a presidential and a parliamentary system of government – ​​and the US and UK systems embody these two choices. Yet our constitutional brew has other ingredients, which are unique to our history, culture and politics, and this is what makes the whole exercise even more intriguing. The study of constitutional law is particularly poignant and significant at this time, given the fundamental constitutional dilemmas Pakistan faces once again.