THE Audio Leaks Commission was established to answer troubling questions about alleged interference in Pakistan’s judicial system. Instead, it became the centre of a constitutional battle over whether those questions could ever be independently examined. Every constitu-tional democracy must confront the same question: who ensures accountability when serious allegations concern the administration of justice itself? The answer can be neither political expediency nor institutional silence. Judicial independence is indispensable to the rule of law, but public confidence in it depends upon credible and impartial mechanisms through which serious allegations can be fairly examined. Independence and accountability are not compet-ing values; they are complementary safeguards.

The 2023 Audio Leaks Commission brought this tension into sharp focus. The controversy began with leaked telephone conversations allegedly involving members of the higher judi-ciary, lawyers, politicians and persons connected with judicial proceedings. Yet the debate soon shifted from whether the allegations were true to whether the Commission itself could lawfully investigate them. The mechanism created to discover the truth became the subject of litigation, while the truth it was intended to uncover remained unexamined. On 19 May 2023, the federal government constituted the Commission under the Pakistan Commissions of In-quiry Act, 2017. Justice Qazi Faez Isa, then the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court, was appointed Chairman, alongside Chief Justice Aamer Farooq of the Islamabad High Court and Chief Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan of the Balochistan High Court.

The........

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