It was in April 2025, inside the Supreme Court, that Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah wrote into Pakistan’s judicial record a sentence that may echo longer than the dispute that occasioned it. He declared that Artificial Intelligence (AI) ought to be ‘welcomed with careful optimism’. The case, Ishfaq Ahmed vs Mushtaq Ahmed, was in form a civil appeal — routine, even forgettable — yet the judgment became something else entirely: a constitutional threshold, quietly crossed.

Behind this verdict lies the weary weight of a court system chronically burdened by delay. For decades, Pakistan’s judiciary has been tasked with doing more with less: fewer judges, thicker files, and slower processes. Litigants die before decisions arrive. The right to a fair trial begins to look aspirational. Into this scene steps a new character — AI — not with robes or oaths, but with algorithms, model prompts, and the promise of speed. The judgment in Ishfaq Ahmed did not close the gates on this new presence. Instead, it opened them, cautiously, while marking the path with constitutional stones.

Justice Shah grounded his reasoning in Article 10A of the Constitution, which guarantees due process and fair trial, and Article 37(d), which promises inexpensive and expeditious justice. These are not aspirational goals to be chased in the abstract. They are binding principles. The court held that AI can support the judiciary — in legal research, linguistic clarity, and even case flow analytics — but its use must never usurp the judge’s interpretive role. Law may be aided by pattern recognition, but it is not reducible to it.

In doing so, the Court offered more than a ruling; it offered a paradigm. One in which AI is an assistant, not an authority. A mirror, not a mask. The danger is not in the use of tools — courts have long embraced new instruments, from typists to PDF readers. The danger lies in outsourcing........

© Courting The Law