As a trailblazing jurist, Chief Justice Jillani authored landmark opinions to help advance human rights, gender equity, and democracy in Pakistan.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, the 21st Chief Justice of Pakistan, has been named the recipient of the 2025 Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law by the Bolch Judicial Institute of Duke Law School. The prize recognizes Chief Justice Jillani’s extraordinary contributions to advancing gender equality, religious liberty, and judicial independence in South Asia and globally. He will be honored during a ceremony at Duke University in April.
As a high court judge and Supreme Court justice in Pakistan from 1994 to 2014, Chief Justice Jillani wrote several groundbreaking opinions that challenged customs and advanced civil liberties for women and religious minorities in Pakistan. In 2007, Justice Jillani was forced to leave the Supreme Court when he refused to take a new oath of fealty to then-President Pervez Musharraf. He was reinstated in 2008 after Musharraf resigned and lawyers throughout Pakistan protested to restore judicial independence. Throughout his career, Jillani has stood for human rights, religious liberty, and the protection of judicial independence in Pakistan and around the world.
“As countries across the globe face growing threats to judicial independence, Chief Justice Jillani is the model of a judge who is rooted in democracy, equality, and human rights and who exemplifies the ideal that an independent judiciary can and must stand as a bulwark between the people and the unfettered exercise of government authority,” said Paul W. Grimm, the David F. Levi Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. “Through judicial leadership, moral courage, and expansive views of liberty and justice, he has advanced social reform and charted a path by which democracy and the ideals of his faith can co-exist and thrive. And his enthusiasm for a more peaceful, more just, more free world is infectious and inspiring. We are delighted to honor him.”
The Susan and Carl Bolch Jr. Prize for the Rule of Law is awarded annually by the Bolch Judicial Institute of Duke Law School to an individual or organization who has demonstrated extraordinary dedication to the rule of law and advancing rule of law principles around the world. By honoring those who do this work, the Bolch Prize draws attention to the ideals of justice and judicial independence and to the constitutional structures and safeguards that undergird a free society.
“We are so pleased to honor Chief Justice Jillani for his commitment to pursuing justice and equality for the citizens of his country and his global leadership in advancing principles of religious liberty and democracy,” said Kerry Abrams, the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean of the School of Law at Duke University. “It will be a privilege for our Duke community to celebrate with and learn from him as we welcome him to campus this spring.”
Charting a path for democracy and Islam
Chief Justice Jillani began his professional career in 1974 as a lawyer in the district courts of Multan and the High Court of Lahore. He was appointed to serve as assistant advocate general of Punjab in 1979 and enrolled as an advocate of the Supreme Court in 1983. He became advocate general of Punjab in 1993. In August 1994, he was elevated by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to serve as a judge of the High Court of Lahore. In 2004, he was elevated to the Supreme Court of Pakistan by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. He served as chief justice for the last year of his tenure on the Supreme Court, 2013-2014.
As a judge and justice of the High Court and Supreme Court, Jillani wrote numerous opinions and judgments that advanced human rights, gender equity, and modernization. His jurisprudence includes decisions that declare education a fundamental right, affirm the right of an adult woman to marry the person of her choice in Islam, establish guidelines for improvements in legal and medical education and regulation, and hold that Pakistan should permit dual nationality in an age of globalized interdependence.
In one case, Jillani rejected an appeal for a pardon by the family of a man convicted of killing his daughter, her husband, and their baby in a so-called “honor killing,” prompted by the daughter’s marriage to a partner of her own choosing. Such killings, Jillani wrote, are “a blow to the concept of a free, dynamic, and egalitarian society.” He continued: “No tradition is sacred, no convention is indispensable, and no precedent worth emulating if it does not stand the test of the fundamentals of a civil society generally expressed through law and the Constitution.”
In 2007, after General Musharraf declared a state of emergency to subvert Supreme Court decisions relating to his reelection, Jillani was among a group of senior judges who refused to take a new oath of loyalty to Musharraf and were subsequently relieved of their judicial duties. This ignited the Lawyers’ Movement, in which lawyers throughout Pakistan protested the Musharraf regime’s assault on judicial independence. The movement culminated in a “Long March” of lawyers from Karachi to Islamabad demanding the reinstatement of the deposed judges. Jillani regained his seat on the Supreme Court in 2009, after Musharraf’s resignation.
As chief justice, Jillani wrote a key suo moto opinion — an action taken by the court of its own accord — on the protection of religious minorities after a deadly attack on a Christian church and a wave of sectarian violence in Pakistan in 2013. Writing for the Supreme Court in a landmark opinion, Jillani detailed the scope of the right to freedom of religion available to all religious minorities under Pakistan’s constitution and outlined a strategy through which religious liberty could be fully realized in the largely Muslim country.
The judgment was groundbreaking because it illustrated how Pakistan could maintain its Islamic values while also upholding democratic ideals and protecting marginalized communities. “The ideology underlying the Pakistan Movement was the creation of a separate nation state for the protection of the interests of the Muslim minority in India,” Chief Justice Jillani wrote in his opinion. “The very genesis of our country is grounded in the protection of the religious rights of all, especially those of minorities.”
Senior Judge and Chief Judge Emeritus J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the 2023 Bolch Prize recipient) described Jillani as “blazing a new trail in his country’s decades’ long struggle dealing with minority religious rights. . . . Justice Jillani demonstrates an opening for a middle ground to provide a basis upon which one does not need to jettison his or her faith in order to meet current constitutional requirements. Indeed, he has demonstrated a path whereby all sides can work together in solving problems in a way consistent with both law and religion.”
In writings and speeches throughout his career, Jillani has argued that judges have a responsibility, through their judgments, to promote tolerance and co-existence to support and strengthen democracy. He has received many awards and honorary degrees, including the American Bar Association’s “Rule of Law” award, which he accepted in 2008 on behalf of the Pakistani judges who refused to swear fealty to Musharraf, and the ABA’s Human Rights Award in 2023, which recognized “his courageous judgments against political impunity in a time of crisis and for defending judicial independence.” He was awarded the 2019 International Justice Excellence Award by the International Institute for Justice for promoting justice at home and around the world.
Chief Justice Jillani is an honorary co-chair of the World Justice Project and an appointed member of the Hague International Judicial Network. He holds degrees from Government Emerson College Multan (B.A. Political Science); Forman Christian College University (M.A. Political Science); and Punjab University (Bachelor of Laws).
About the Bolch Prize
The Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law is awarded in accordance with the Bolch Judicial Institute’s founding documents, which specify that the Prize “shall be given by the Bolch Judicial Institute to recognize the lifetime achievement of an individual or a single or series of acts of an individual or an organization creating, promoting, or preserving the importance of the rule of law nationally or internationally.”
The recipient is selected by the Bolch Judicial Institute’s Advisory Board and honored during a ceremony at Duke University. The prize includes a custom artwork and a significant monetary award. Past prize recipients are: retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (2019); Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke of the South Africa Constitutional Court (2020); retired Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (2021); Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2022); the International Association of Women Judges (2023); and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (2024).
For event details, contact Kristin Triebel at Kristin.triebel@law.duke.edu.