ISLAMABAD: Justice Musarrat Hilali was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Friday, making her the second woman judge in the country's 75-year-old history to be elevated to the apex court.
Hilali became the acting chief justice of the Peshawar High Court on April 1, making history as the first woman to be appointed to the position.
This year, Pakistani women have achieved many firsts in legal history. In January, Justice Ayesha Malik was appointed as the first female Supreme Court judge. Last month, Pakistani lawyers Sabahat Rizvi and Rabbiya Bajwa made history by getting elected to the positions of secretary and vice president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association respectively.
"This momentous occasion marks a significant milestone as Justice Hilali becomes not only the second female Supreme Court judge but also the first female judge from KP," AGHS, prominent Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir's law firm, wrote on Twitter.
Justice Hilali was born in Peshawar on August 8, 1961 at the home of Mir Hilali, an activist with the Khudai Khedmatgar, a predominantly Pashtun nonviolent resistance movement known for its activism against the British Raj in colonial India. She studied law at Khyber Law College at Peshawar University and enrolled as an advocate at the district courts in 1983, going on to become a high court advocate in 1988 and an advocate of the Supreme Court in 2006.
Justice Hilali was the first elected female secretary of the Peshawar Bar Association from 1988-1989, vice president twice from 1992 to 1994, and the first female General Secretary from 1997-1998. She was also the first woman twice elected as an executive member of the Supreme Court Bar Association from 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 respectively.
Justice Hilali was appointed the first female Additional Advocate General of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from November 2001 till March 2004, the first woman Chairperson of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Environmental Protection Tribunal and the first female Ombudsperson for 'Protection against the Harassment of Women in the Workplace.'
Justice Hilali is set to retire on August 7, 2023.
Last year, Justice Ayesha A. Malik became the first woman in Pakistan's history to be elevated to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Her appointment was endorsed by the Judicial Commission of Pakistan, a body responsible for the appointment of Supreme Court and high court judges in Pakistan.
