Lawyers' Movement

Lawyers' Movement
Activists of Pakistan Muslim League (N) participate in a long march on 15 March 2009, organised to support the Lawyers' Movement that had appealed for the restoration of judiciary since the unconstitutional suspension of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
Date	9 March 2007 — 17 March 2009
Location	Nationwide, throughout Pakistan
Causes	Suspension of chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
Goals	Restoration of judiciary and reinstatement of removed judges.
Methods	Protest demonstration, rallying motorcades
Result	Eventual restoration of judiciary
Parties to the civil conflict
Pakistani judiciary and various parties in opposition Government of Pakistan
Lead figures
Iftikhar M. Chaudhry Munir A. Malik Aitzaz Ahsan Ali Ahmad Kurd Nawaz Sharif Pervez Musharraf Asif Ali Zardari

The Lawyers' Movement, also known as the Movement for the Restoration of Judiciary or the Black Coat Protests, was the popular mass protest movement initiated by the lawyers of Pakistan in response to the former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf's actions of 9 March 2007 when he unconstitutionally suspended Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court. Following the suspension of the chief justice, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) declared the judge's removal as an "assault on the independence of judiciary" and were backed by several political parties.

In the first few months of 2007, several conflicts had already raged between chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and the Pakistani government. Chaudhry had worked hard to clear a backlog of cases at the Supreme Court and had "[taken] on politically controversial issues", particularly with regard to the Pakistan Steel Mills corruption case where the chief justice ruled against the sale of the state-owned steel mills at a "throw-away price". Issues pertaining to the privatisation of the state-owned steel mills upset Shaukat Aziz, who served as the prime minister under the Musharraf administration.

What irked president Pervez Musharraf however was the controversial Missing Persons case that found Pakistan's intelligence agencies (including the FIA and the ISI) to be complicit in the forced disappearances of up to 400 people (including terror suspects and human rights activists) without due process since 2001. Under Chaudhry's leadership, the courts had increasingly started "exercising independence from the government" when it ordered the security agencies to produce the missing people in court.