The Supreme Court’s (SC’s) decision to reverse a 2013 ruling laying out conditions for appointments to 55 public sector regulatory or statutory bodies is a welcome resolution to an administrative and legal anomaly. On Friday the SC ruled that its 2013 decision requiring the federal government to establish a commission to appoint the heads of these bodies was not in keeping with Article 90 of the Constitution, which vests authority, including the power to make official appointments, with the Executive. The SC ruled that the verdict delivered in July 2013 constituted interference in the affairs of the Executive as outlined in the Federal Government’s Rules of Business (ROB) 1973, which are pursuant to Article 90 and 99 of the Constitution. The SC under its crusading Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry last year ordered the government to form a commission to oversee and ensure that all appointments to autonomous and semi-autonomous federal organisations such as the Competition Commission of Pakistan, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, were made according to merit. A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk, hearing a request from the federal government to review the verdict, issued a ten-page judgment noting that appointments to said positions were the exclusive domain of the federal government and that the power to do so was vested in the Executive by parliament. The SC’s 2013 order to the government came after a petition by current cabinet minister Khawaja Asif challenged the appointments of the heads of these organisations by the caretaker government during the election interregnum last year. His counsel argued that said power lay solely with the elected government. On Friday the SC noted that while specific appointments could be challenged, the SC did not have the power to appoint or order the appointment of a commission to oversee them. It nonetheless recommended to the government that such a commission would be in the interests of accountability and meritocracy. An audible sigh of relief can be heard in the corridors of the PM secretariat and offices of federal ministries after this ruling. The federal government has been routinely lambasted for failing to appoint the heads of autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies over the last 17 months; the reason why it was unable to do so has become much clearer. Though it would be difficult to comment on the exact intentions of former CJ Chaudhry when issuing his 2013 judgement, his history of being a superlatively active CJ suggests that in his desire to see the federal government deliver, he may have overzealously crossed the bounds that separate the Judiciary from the Executive. This imbalance was corrected by the SC in Friday’s ruling. While it may not seem overly important, the ruling resolves some important constitutional anomalies that have caused considerable grief to Pakistan over the years, primary among them the habit of governments or state institutions to act without accountability because they are effectively able to sidestep the conditions for the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution. Autocratic tendencies have been the norm rather the exception not only in Pakistan’s history, but in the history of the region that Pakistan emerged from. Overcoming these tendencies is a continuing struggle and separating the powers of the state so that they are balanced between the independent branches of the Judiciary, Executive and Legislature is fundamental to the notion of democratic accountability. The three branches of state oversee, check and balance each other, but crossing the lines of either is, as our history proves, a recipe for abuses of power. Pakistan’s recently reinvigorated judiciary has been an important part of the transition to democratic government and in holding democratic governments accountable for their actions. Continuing the trend is a positive move by the SC, which is realising its institutional powers premised in the Constitution as a neutral and therefore trustworthy arbiter of dispute and authority on matters of law. Its suggestion to the government to form an oversight commission is sound and given more weight by the fact that the SC is acting inside its constitutional powers. *