Brief Analysis !
Recent amendments in NAB laws are considered by legal experts as an act of Person-Specific Legislation. Person-specific legislation can easily defeats the spirit of democracy, representation & constitution.
What is legislation?
According to the Oxford Dictionaries, legislation is,
laws considered collectively through the process of making or enacting laws. Some synonyms of legislation are law-making, codification, prescription, ratification and law.
What are the purposes of legislation?
According to Britannica, the purpose of legislation is to provide a framework for governmental action in fields that are either entirely new or that were not considered by the common law. Legislation can have various functions, such as to control, to authorize, to forbid, to provide, to sanction, to grant, to declare or to limit.
According to the Legal Information Institute, legislation refers to the preparation and enactment of laws by a legislative body through its lawmaking process. The legislative process includes evaluating, amending, and voting on proposed laws and is concerned with the words used in the bill to communicate the values, judgments, and purposes of the proposal.
Why does person specific legislation destroy the Scheme of Legislation & Justice ?
Person specific legislation is also known as a bill of attainder. According to Wikipedia, a bill of attainder is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial. As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person’s civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself.
Bills of attainder are considered unconstitutional in many countries because they violate several legal principles, most importantly:
The right to due process:
Every person accused of a crime has the right to a fair and impartial trial by a competent court before being convicted and punished.
The principle of legality:
No one can be punished for an act that was not defined as a crime by law at the time it was committed.
The separation of powers:
Only the judicial branch has the authority to determine guilt or innocence and impose penalties for crimes; the legislative branch cannot interfere with this function.
Bills of attainder destroy the justice system because they undermine the rule of law and the protection of human rights. They allow arbitrary and discriminatory persecution of individuals or groups without regard for evidence or fairness. They also create uncertainty and fear among citizens who may be targeted by such bills for political or personal reasons.
In a wider sense, Person-Specific Legislation is performed to benefit or persecute individuals & groups. It further defeats the spirit of legislation & makes legislation a tool to woo or victimize others. Then, Person-Specific Legislation is rampant in Pakistan. It is violating the spirit of legislation, democracy, rule of law & constitution. Therefore, higher courts may intervene more to declare Person-Specific Legislation unconstitutional as it mostly defeats the spirit of constitution.
For example, recent amendments in NAB laws are attributed to be Person-Specific Legislation.
