A Study of Court Precedents in the Judicial Decision-Making Process

Abstract

The present study explores the public opinion-media pressure-judicial decision-making link in the light of high-profile cases in case of Pakistan. The central idea behind it is that while the courts must be guided by law and constitutional principle, in practice they are not operating in a vacuum. In hyper-public litigation, the media and popular opinion and public pressure seldom actually supplant the legal doctrine, but it does influence the atmosphere in which it occurs. The research method used is qualitative with the approach of doctrinal and socio-legal. It examines the independence and accountability of the judiciary from a both a constitutional and a theoretical perspective, in proposing that the judiciary be equally protected from unwarranted interference while simultaneously being open to principled questioning. The analysis is then expanded by a socio-legal lens that looks at the practices of electronic media, social media, agenda-setting, framing and trial by media in popular perceptions of justice. Based on three illustrative cases (the blasphemy prosecution of Asiya Noreen, the murder trial against Noor Mukadam, and the transnational defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard), the article concludes that, given the current media environment, judicial independence is not undermined by direct interference, but rather by the ongoing normalisation of adjudication in the context of ongoing opinion formation. Their answer is not secrecy, but neither is its populist responsiveness, it is a principled balancing of transparency, due process, responsible reporting and institutional resilience.

Keywords: Judicial Decision Making, Judicial Precendents, Judicial Independence, Media Trial, Public opinion, Pakistan