photo by beachblogger42 (detail)

Back in November of 2007, I wrote a piece about a speech Mario Cuomo gave to the Federal Bar Council in which he praised lawyers in Pakistan for marching in the streets to preserve the rule of law in Pakistan. He encouraged American lawyers to be as diligent in support of our own rule of law here in the US.

At the time, the outcome in Pakistan was unknown. Would these lawyers loose their licenses and livelihoods for daring to oppose the government? Would they loose their freedom and be imprisoned? Would they lose their lives? Or would they eventually be intimidated into silence?

Well, now we know how the story turned out.

The Washington Post is reporting:

[T]he Pakistani government announced early Monday morning that it would restore the former chief justice of the Supreme Court and a group of other deposed judges in a major capitulation to opponents.

The Pakistani government tried to stop the latest protest march, attempting to bottle up marchers at their starting points, as well as erecting barricades at their proposed destination to keep marchers out.

[A] broad coalition of opponents who demanded the reinstatement of Pakistan’s independent judiciary and threatened to march on the capital, Islamabad, until Chaudhry was brought back.

The decision marked an extraordinary victory for Pakistan’s legal community, which has been agitating peacefully for the judges’ reinstatement for the past two years,

I like it when the good guys win. I like it even more when lawyers turn out to be the good guys.

So, to my brethren at the bar far across the sea, I salute you. Well done.