Pakistan's Experience with Formal Law

Osama Siddique is Associate Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. He has previously worked as a transactional lawyer at two leading U.S. law firms and as an advocate in the Pakistani appellate courts. His research articles have been published in a number of international academic law journals.

'A fascinating and troubling study of Pakistan's judicial system: its history misunderstood by its acolytes, its practice unaltered by countless reforms, its operations a tribulation for its constituents. Siddique analyzes the limits of scholarly reflection and well intentioned reform by placing them alongside the perceptions, strategies and experiences of those who use the system. A powerful and broad-ranging cautionary tale.' David Kennedy, Harvard Law School

• Introduction; 1. The hegemony of heritage: the 'narratives of colonial displacement' and the absence of the past in Pakistani reform narratives; 2. Law in practice: the Lahore district courts litigants survey (2010–2011); 3. Law, crime, context and vulnerability: the Punjab crime perception survey (2009–2010); 4. Approaches to legal and judicial reform in Pakistan: postcolonial inertia and the paucity of imagination in times of turmoil and change; 5. Reform on paper: a post-mortem of justice sector reform in Pakistan from 1998–2010; 6. Reform nirvanas and reality checks: justice sector reform in Pakistan in the twenty-first century and the monopoly of the 'experts'; 7. Towards a new approach; Appendices.