Islamabad: A divided Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) made history by approving the nomination of the country’s first female Supreme Court judge. During a tense JCP session that lasted nearly three hours, Justice Ayesha A. Malik of the Lahore High Court was confirmed by a majority of five to four.
Justice Malik’s candidacy was backed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed.
If she is elevated following approval from an eight-member bipartisan parliamentary committee, Justice Malik will remain a judge of the Supreme Court until March 2031 and may even have a chance to become the first woman to be chief justice of Pakistan.
Justice Malik completed her early education from Paris and New York schools and then completed her senior Cambridge from the Karachi Grammar School.
She studied law at the Pakistan College of Law in Lahore and went on to do her LLB from the Harvard Law School Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, where she was named a London H Gammon fellow 1998-1999.
From 2001 to the date of her elevation as a high court judge, she worked with the law firm of Rizvi, Isa, Afridi, and Angell, first as a senior associate and then a partner in charge of the firm’s Lahore office.
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