Anwar Zaheer Jamali ( ur, born 31 December 1951) is a Pakistani

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

who served as the 24th

Chief Justice of Pakistan } The Chief Justice of Pakistan (Urdu: ) (Initialism, initials as CJP) is head of the court system of Pakistan (the Judiciary of Pakistan, judicature branch of Government of Pakistan, government) and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of Paki ...

. He remained in the Supreme Court from 3 August 2009 to 30 December 2016. He has also served as the Acting

Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan The Chief Election Commissioner is the authority and the appointed chair of the Election Commission of Pakistan— an institution constitutionally empowered to conduct free and fair elections to the national and provincial legislatures. Befo ...

, and Chief Justice of the

Sindh High Court The High Court of Sindh ( ur, ) is the highest judicial institution of the Pakistani province of Sindh. Established in 1906, the Court situated in the provincial capital at Karachi. Apart from being the highest Court of Appeal for Sindh in ...

. In 1995, he was elected as Chairman Executive Committee (CEC) of the

Sindh Bar Council The Sindh Bar Council is a statutory regulatory body of lawyers in Sindh for safeguarding the rights, interests, rights and privileges of practicing lawyers, within the province of Sindh, Pakistan. The Council is a deliberative body which regula ...

and held this position till his elevation to the Bench. He was highly praised for being one of the few judges who refused to take fresh oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order No.1 of 2007. He took several suo motos as a Chief Justice, notably on several human rights cases.

Early life and education

Jamali hails from the noble, religious family of Qutub

Jamal-ud-Din Hansvi Sheikh Jamal-ud-Din Ahmad was a direct descendant of Imam Abu Hanifa, the renowned Sunni-Persian jurist of Islam. He was born at Ghazni, ( Khorasan) which is in Modern-day Afghanistan, in 583 A.H. (c. 1187). He was five years old when his famil ...

, the disciple of Baba

Fariduddin Ganjshakar Farīd al-Dīn Masʿūd Ganj-i-Shakar ( ; – 7 May 1266) was a 13th-century Punjabi Sunni Muslim preacher and mystic, who was one of the most revered and distinguished Muslim mystics of the medieval period. He is known reverentially as B ...

and is a direct descendant of Imam

Abu Hanifa Nuʿmān ibn Thābit ibn Zūṭā ibn Marzubān ( ar, نعمان بن ثابت بن زوطا بن مرزبان; –767), commonly known by his '' kunya'' Abū Ḥanīfa ( ar, أبو حنيفة), or reverently as Imam Abū Ḥanīfa by Sunni Mus ...

. His parents migrated from

Jaipur Jaipur (; Hindi Language, Hindi: ''Jayapura''), formerly Jeypore, is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Rajasthan. , the city had a pop ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

in 1947. He was born in

Hyderabad (Sindh) Hyderabad ( Sindhi and ur, ; ) is a city and the capital of Hyderabad Division in the Sindh province of Pakistan. It is the second-largest city in Sindh, and the eighth largest in Pakistan. Founded in 1768 by Mian Ghulam Shah Kalhoro of th ...

on 30 December 1951. He received his bachelor's degree in Commerce from the

University of Sindh The University of Sindh ( ur, ; sd, سنڌ يونيورسٽي; informally known as Sindh University) is a public research university in Pakistan located in the city of Jamshoro. It is one of the oldest universities in Pakistan and was certifi ...

in 1971 and a bachelor's degree in law in 1973 from the same university.

Professional career

He was enrolled at the Sindh Bar Council as an Advocate of the Lower Court on 10.01.1975 and as an Advocate of the Sindh High Court on 13.11.1977. He was enrolled as an Advocate of the Supreme Court on 14.05.1987. He also served as lecturer at Hyderabad (Sindh) Law College for about two years.

Judicial

Jamali was elevated as judge of the

in May 1998. He was nominated as Administrative Judge for the Sindh High Court on 7 June 2006 and continued as such till 3 November 2007 when he refused to take fresh oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order No.1 of 2007. He was reappointed as Judge and Chief Justice of the

on 27 August 2008. He was elevated as judge of the

Supreme Court of Pakistan The Supreme Court of Pakistan ( ur, ; ''Adālat-e-Uzma Pākistān'') is the apex court in the judicial hierarchy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Established in accordance to thePart VIIof the Constitution of Pakistan, it has ultimate a ...

on 3 August 2009 and appointed as Acting Chief Election Commissioner of the

Election Commission of Pakistan The Election Commission of Pakistan ( ur, ; ECP) is an independent, autonomous, permanent and constitutionally established federal body responsible for organizing and conducting elections to the national parliament, provincial legislatures, l ...

on 3 July 2014. He was appointed as 24th Chief Justice of Pakistan on 10 September 2015 by President Mamnoon Hussain.

Other positions

*President District Bar Association Hyderabad in the years 1983-84, 1995–96, 1996–97 and 1997-98. *Elected Member, Sindh Bar Council from Hyderabad Division for two terms of five years each in the years 1989 and 1990. *Elected Chairman Benevolent Fund Committee of Sindh Bar Council in the year 1991. *Elected Chairman Executive Committee of Sindh Bar Council in the year 1995. *Member Board of Governors for the Government Law College in Sindh (excluding Karachi). *Member Syndicate NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi in November 1999. *Chairman Enrollment Committee, Sindh Bar Council in March 2000. *Chairman Provincial Zakat Council Sindh for a term of three years, December 2003.

References

External links