Researching the Law of Pakistan

At a glance

Legal system family

Mixed. Article 227 of the Constitution requires all existing laws to be brought into conformity with the Injunctions of Islam and forbids enacting any law repugnant to them, and article 203D gives the Federal Shariat Court jurisdiction to decide whether a law is repugnant.³

Official gazette

The Gazette notification is the original source of a federal law. The Ministry of Law and Justice says so on its own consolidation and sends readers wanting notifications to a separate Document Retrieval System.¹

Constitution in force

Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, promulgated 12 April 1973 on the Ministry of Law and Justice's own chronological listing, where it is filed under General Laws with no act number.²

Language of the authoritative text

Article 251 of the Constitution makes Urdu the National language, and provides that, subject to that, English may be used for official purposes until arrangements are made for its replacement by Urdu.³

Pakistan is the rare jurisdiction whose government consolidation tells you not to rely on it. The Pakistan Code is the Ministry of Law and Justice's own compilation of federal law, and the disclaimer at the foot of every page says that the content is for information purposes only, that it is currently under review, and that if there is any doubt or query the reader should refer to the original source, the relevant Gazette notification. That is an unusually candid thing for a ministry to print about its own product, and it is the single sentence that should shape how a Pakistani citation is checked.

It has a history, too, and the history is visible in the markup. An earlier and blunter version of the same disclaimer is still in the page, commented out, saying that the laws should not be taken as authentic or error free legislative instruments. It is not text the page shows, so this guide does not treat it as something the Ministry currently says. But its replacement carries the same instruction: the Gazette notification is where the law is.

Getting to a notification is the hard part. The Pakistan Code sends readers to a Document Retrieval System on a separate host under the Ministry, and that host did not complete a connection from this machine on any attempt. The Printing Corporation of Pakistan runs a site that does answer, over plain HTTP only, and serves gazette notifications as PDFs whose file names carry a part number in Roman numerals, in the form Ex.Gaz.III. How many parts the Gazette of Pakistan runs to is not stated on any page reached here, and a file name is not a table of contents, so this page does not say. That site is listed below as a fetch note rather than as a source, because nothing served from it names the host it came from. The practical position is that the Ministry names the Gazette as the authority and does not itself put a searchable copy of it in front of you.

What the Pakistan Code does well is dates. Its chronological listing for a given year gives each enactment a subject category, an act number in Roman numerals, and a promulgation date. The listing for 1973 gives the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan a promulgation date of 12 April 1973, files it under General Laws, and leaves its act number blank where every neighbouring entry carries one. That blank is correct and it is instructive: the Constitution was not an Act of the legislature in the way the High Treason (Punishment) Act of the same year was, and the Ministry's own table records the difference by leaving the column empty.

The amendment history is on the Senate's site rather than the Ministry's, and it is a plain list. Twenty-seven amendments, from the First of 1974 to the Twenty-Seventh of 2025, each given as an ordinal and a year. What the list does not do is say which article any amendment changed, so a reader holding a constitutional article and needing to know whether it is current has to work forward through the amendments rather than backward from the article. Anyone quoting a Pakistani constitutional provision from a printed edition should establish which amendment the edition was set to before quoting it, because the rate here is high enough that an edition only a few years old can be several amendments behind.

The classification question is genuinely mixed rather than diplomatically hedged, and the Constitution says so itself in two places. Article 227 provides that all existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah, and that no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to those Injunctions. Article 203D then gives the Federal Shariat Court power, on its own motion or on the petition of a citizen or of a government, to examine and decide whether any law or provision of law is repugnant to them. That is not a statement of aspiration. It is a standing jurisdiction over the content of the statute book, and it applies to a statute book largely inherited: the Ministry's own year filter runs back to 1839, more than a century before the state, and the Urdu side of the same site lists several of those older enactments by name. Two bodies of law, both live, with a court between them.

That the site has an Urdu side at all raises the language question, and the Constitution answers it in a way worth quoting rather than summarising. Article 251 makes Urdu the National language and requires arrangements for its use for official and other purposes within fifteen years of the commencing day. Clause 2 then provides that, subject to that, English may be used for official purposes until arrangements are made for its replacement by Urdu. Clause 2 is the provision under which a federal statute in English is an official text rather than a courtesy translation, and it is drafted as a transitional permission rather than a settled rule. The Pakistan Code reflects that arrangement in its own shape, with an English section and a separate Urdu section, and says nothing itself about which of the two governs.

One boundary worth stating, because it is easy to miss. The Pakistan Code is federal. Its own headings say so, its search is described as a search of federal laws, and its category counts are counts of federal enactments. Provincial legislation is not in it. A question about land, local government, police organisation or rent in a particular province is a question about provincial law, and it is not answered by the site that answers most federal questions. Nothing consulted for this page establishes where each province publishes its own statute book, and that is a gap this page names rather than fills.

The National Assembly publishes Acts of Parliament, bills and the orders of the day as PDFs on its own site, which is the fastest route to the text of a recent enactment while a consolidated version is still catching up.

Primary sources online

• The Pakistan Code (opens an external site)The Ministry of Law and Justice's consolidation of federal law, with its own warning about what it is worth.
• Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (opens an external site)The Ministry's page for the constitutional text. The text itself is served as an embedded PDF.
• Senate of Pakistan, Constitution Amendments (opens an external site)Every amendment by ordinal and year, First to Twenty-Seventh. It does not say which article each one changed.
• National Assembly of Pakistan (opens an external site)Acts of Parliament, bills and orders of the day, served as PDFs. The quickest route to a recent enactment.
• Printing Corporation of Pakistan (opens an external site)Gazette notification PDFs, their file names carrying a part number. Plain HTTP only; the host does not answer on HTTPS.

Reviewed 2026-08-30. 5 sources cited on this page.