Muhammad Munir
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2009) |
| Muhammad Munir |
|
|---|---|
| 2nd Chief Justice of Pakistan | |
| In office June 29, 1954 – May 2, 1960 |
|
| Preceded by | Abdur Rashid |
| Succeeded by | Muhammad Shahabuddin |
| Personal details | |
| Nationality |  Pakistani |
Muhammad Munir (1895–1979) was chief justice of Pakistan from 1954 to 1960. He obtained his degree of master's in English Literature from Government College Lahore, he joined Law College to earn his L.L.B. He started his career as a lawyer in Amritsar in 1921. He moved to Lahore in 1922.
He was appointed assistant advocate-general of Punjab in 1937, and first president of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal of India in 1940. He was elevated to the Bench of Judicature at Lahore in 1942. He and Justice Din Muhammad represented the All India Muslim League on the Punjab Boundary Commission in 1947. The following year he was made the chairman of the Pakistan Pay Commission. In 1949, he was made the chief justice of the Lahore High Court.
In 1954, he was made the chief justice of the Federal Court, chief justice of Pakistan. Besides being the chief justice, he also remained the chairman of the Delimitation Commission from June 1956 to July 1958. He retired on May 2, 1960.
He represented Pakistan at the International Criminal Jurisdiction Committee in 1951 and was elected its vice-chairman. He and Justice M.R. Kayani were members of the Punjab Disturbances Court of Inquiry|Punjab Disturbances Court of Inquiry that was set up in 1953. Both of them asked the clerics some tough questions about the rights of non-Muslims in an Islamic state and other issues. He is also the author of Principles and Digest of the Law of Evidence.
He invoked the doctrine of necessity, validating the dissolution of Pakistan's first constituent assembly. The assembly was dissolved on October 24, 1954, by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad, an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University. He has been widely criticized for validating the dissolution, although some of the Pakistani politicians had called for its dissolution.
Justice Munir also wrote a thought-provoking book From Jinnah to Zia, arguing that Jinnah stood for a tolerant and secular state where Muslims and non-Muslims had equal rights.
[edit] See also
| Preceded by Abdur Rashid |
Chief Justices of Pakistan | Succeeded by Muhammad Shahabuddin |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
This Pakistani biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
