An exclusive #Leaders dialogue with Nida Usman Chaudhary on rebuilding legal culture, corporate governance, regulatory capture, and the trap of technological neutrality.
Robert Williams: Ms. Nida Usman Chaudhary, thank you for your maiden participation in Justice News247, an occasion on which we invite you to a long-term partnership. Looking at the architecture of modern legal systems, gender equality and the right to a safe working environment are often viewed through the lens of social policy. From a doctrinal perspective, do you consider these concepts to be mere ethical adjustments to the law, or do they represent a fundamental pillar of validity for the rule of law itself?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: For the large part, the ‘rule of law’ has been understood in a procedural context and spoken of in terms of due process and formal equality before the law but a legal system cannot meaningfully guarantee equality if the institutions through which those rights are exercised are themselves structured in ways that may make participation unequal of unsafe.
For instance, women may formally possess the same right to enter the legal profession, appear in cases, become a judge or occupy other leadership positions within the profession as their male counterparts but if the institutional environment exposes them to harassment, discrimination or other barriers, resulting in their exclusion from it, then the formal guarantee of equality remains a promise on paper only. It is not sufficient for the law to simply say that everyone is equal and then remain indifferent to the structural conditions that hinder people’s access to those rights in differentiated ways. For me, the real test of the rule of law is not simply whether the law says everyone is equal or not, but whether the institutions of law make that equality capable of being lived, accessed, enjoyed and realized by all.
A genuinely functioning rule of law system must be concerned not only with the neutrality of the legal rules but also with whether those rulesoperate within institutions that are accessible, fair and safe. From a rule of law perspective, this actually goes to the heart of the legitimacy of the system itself because courts and legal institutions derive authority, not merely from legal texts, but from public confidence that they operate fairly and are capable of delivering the safety and equality for accessing rights.
When a system fails to produce this kind of substantive equality in its outcomes, it affects the very legitimacy of such institutions so I would not regard gender equality or the right to safe working environment as merely ‘ethical adjustments’ to the law. For me, they are actually part of the very architecture of the rule of law itself and among the conditions through which the rule of law sustains its very legitimacy and hence validity.
Robert Williams: You teach Company Law and lead major diversity initiatives. How does the rigor of corporate
law intersect with the ethical imperative of governance? Is corporate social responsibility a simple compliance requirement or a redefinition of the corporate interest?
Nida Usman Chaudhary:. That is a very interesting question, and one I often discuss when teaching directors’ duties under Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, particularly the question of who a director really owes their duties to.
The shareholder-versus-stakeholder debate, and the idea of enlightened shareholder value, are useful starting points for understanding corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. Today, companies operate within a myriad of relationships including, with employees, consumers, communities, creditors, shareholders and the environment. These interests can sometimes conflict, but they also affect the long-term sustainability and reputation of a company. With social media, geopolitical positions and public expectations, that connection has become even more visible.
I see Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as one way companies can respond to these wider responsibilities. The European Commission, for example, describes CSR as businesses taking responsibility for their societal impacts, but CSR should not simply mean writing a cheque for a good cause or ticking a reporting box. A company might sponsor clean drinking water in a community affected by its operations, but that does not necessarily address the underlying responsibilities created by those operations.
That is where I believe, corporate governance becomes important. You see, governance is much broader than compliance. It is about how corporate power is exercised and whether decision making is responsible, transparent and attentive to equality, human rights, employee welfare, creditors, consumers and the environment. A company can technically comply with the law while still making decisions that are deeply problematic, for example by exploiting regulatory gaps to avoid environmental responsibility.
So, for me, the distinction is important. CSR can be one tool through which companies respond to their wider responsibilities, but corporate governance is the broader framework through which those responsibilities become part of corporate decision making. In that sense, I do think the idea of corporate interest is gradually moving beyond shareholders towards a broader understanding of stakeholders, transparency, fair representation and inclusivity but that shift is being driven more fundamentally by evolving ideas of corporate governance rather than by CSR alone.
Robert Williams: As the founder of the Women in Law Initiative in Pakistan, how do you navigate the tension between the universalism of human rights, national legal norms, and the specific socio-cultural particularities of the South Asian region?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: Another interesting question! and the short answer is that I don’t. I don’t have to navigate the tension between universalism of human rights, national legal norms and the socio-cultural particularities of South Asia.
In Pakistan, much of our work at the Women in Law Initiative is rooted in our own constitutional framework and laws, particularly the Fundamental Rights chapter of the Constitution of Pakistan 1973 which already contain these universal principles.
So equality, non- discrimination, dignity and equal protection are not foreign concepts that we have to import into Pakistan; they are already embedded in our constitutional order under Article 14 and 25 of the Constitution.
We use those principles as the foundation for our advocacy and then ask how effectively and to what extent are they being realised within our institutions. For instance, we have consistently demanded that the Judicial Commission of Pakistan, the body that is responsible for nominating and appointing judges in the higher courts, take affirmative actions under Article 25 (3) and 34 of the Constitution of Pakistan to ensure full participation of women in national life including in the higher judiciary, to address the gender disparity between male and female judges at the top.
Our approach is also deliberately evidence-based and data oriented. Rather than making broad claims about gender inequality, we collect primary data and publish research documenting women’s representation and participation across the justice sector, particularly in judiciary through our annual‘State of Women’s Representation in Judiciary Reports’ which take a quantitative look at the disparity in judicial appointments across all tiers and help us visualise the disparity. These then serve as important advocacy documents that makes people really sit up and listen. We support this work through qualitative studies as well to document where the challenges within the structures and the systems are and suggest recommendations accordingly. Some get accepted, some get ignored, but we continue doing our work. Our experience has shown that when you can demonstrate, through evidence and data from your own context then the advocacy becomes harder to dismiss as Western agenda.
Another thing that we do is that where comparison is required, we don’t automatically look to Western jurisdictions. We look to countries with which Pakistan may share meaningful similarities, whether historical, religious, political or socio-cultural, and ask what lessons can realistically be adapted. For instance, Pakistan was the last country in the region to appoint a female to its supreme court as a judge in the year 2022, so until this was done, comparisons with Bangladesh, India, Sri lanka and even Afghanistan provided the relevant comparative context to place Pakistan vis a vis its regional counterparts and became an effective strategy for advocacy for gender justice in judiciary.
But these regional comparisons can only show where the gaps are or where we stand in comparison to other states; they don’t necessarily dictate new principles as principles such as those of equality and non-discrimination or rights such as right to life, work, dignity etc remain universal so I don’t believe that just because there are gaps in practice it is because the country or the region is operating on different principles that are not already universal, because that way, according to reports from UN Women and global indices, no country in the world has achieved full gender and legal equality so it is not just a South Asian issue but a global issue where we are seeing a global backlash and roll back on women’s rights and towards international human rights and the international legal order as well, bringing their universality into question in different geo-political contexts.
Robert Williams: The international recognitions you have received — such as being named a Justitia Laureate in Vienna in 2021 confirm a global acknowledgment. Is this visibility the natural outcome of elite perseverance, or does it serve as a necessary political instrument to open doors that would otherwise remain closed?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: When I received the Justitia Laureate in Academia in Vienna in 2021, I saw it not only as a personal acknowledgement, but also as an opportunity to create visibility for the work we were doing through Women in Law in Pakistan. I said it in my acceptance speech as well that I accepted the award on behalf of all those women in law and allies who had contributed to the initiativebecause for me, recognition was never about my person but the work we collectively did and I won’t lie, I come from a place where international recognition does give more credibility and weight to the work we do; and this is very important for us back at home as well especially when the work we dois the kind that challenges the existing gendered dynamics that those in power keep pretending to be deaf about. It becomes harder for them to ignore us.
Even globally, it is important because it creates space for work emerging from the contexts that are often overlooked or treated as peripheral and enable that to be connected to a much wider collective space and shared struggle in the global arena, adding the diversity of perspectives and contributing to shared learning from differentiated contexts and strategies that benefits everyone. So such accolades do open rooms, conversations and networks that may otherwise remain invisible or inaccessible. I have for instance learnt so much about my Turkish and Egytian counterparts and their struggles and strategies from attending the conferences in Vienna and have been able to develop professional relationships in different countries which has enabled us to connect and share work and other opportunities with each other.
At this point, I am convinced that more that mentorship, it is sponsorship and access to such networks and platforms that women need so for me, the real value of visibility is not the award itself but what it can do for our community and our work because recognition can only become useful when it creates space for others or when it brings attention to structural issues rather than simply celebrating one person. I was happy to put Pakistan on the map and since then the work, struggles and successes of many of my colleagues also found its way to Vienna and other global forums, with
Jalila Haider, becoming the second Pakistani to have received the Justitia Laureate in 2023 and many others being nominated and shortlisted as well. Some of them have been working in mostchallenging areas of the country and so no, I don’t think it is merely an outcome of elite perseverance in every case. A lot depends on the recognition itself and how it is structured and administered.
Robert Williams:Workplace safety and the prevention of harassment often require a shift in organizational culture. To what extent is a punitive legislative framework sufficient, and where does the role of the legal guild begin in self-regulating this phenomenon?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: This question has reminded me of a quote we came across while studying law that it is not the severity but the certainty of punishment that deters crime and I think the organizational culture versus the punitive legislative framework fits right into this because if there is a culture of silence within an organisation or there is weak enforcement of the legislative framework, then no matter how good a law is, it won’t be sufficient. However, this works till the time one is looking at a regular corporate commercial organisation. A legal guild is not structured like a commercial organisation and it has its own unique dynamics with regards to its members, their regulation and their relationships inter-se. It is a context in which the simple dynamics of employer-employee relationship on which the workpace harassment law is premised, does not exist. Members of the bar are not ‘employees’ in the traditional sense of the way that term is defined within the law.
Moreover, in Pakistan, there is the added challenge of the regulatory body i.e. the bar council being under what is called the regulatory capture as it is voted into power by the very members it ought to regulate. This creates unique challenges when pushing for complaints against lawyers. Law firms may be closer to the concept of organisation within the meaning of this law however, there is significant power imbalance in the way firms are run, where the power for access to clients, briefs, appearance in court cases, appraisals and promotions etc. are all placed within the hands of few individuals who run the firms without rigours of regulation, compliance and transparency that may be required in a corporate set up.
As a result, neither is there regulation by the bar council nor is there any motivation for self regulation. In fact, anecdotaly speaking, there may be unspoken and unwritten rules in some firms against hiring females or allocating them court work out of fear of such incidents which is unfortunate because legal profession ought to have heightened responsibility given that lawyers are themselves officers of the court and are expected to uphold standards of integrity and fairness.
We cannot demand accountability from other institutions while tolerating the same conduct within our own profession. I would argue that Bar councils, law firms, chambers and professional associations must take responsibility for setting standards of professional conduct and making it clear that harassment, discrimination, retaliation and abuse of power are not acceptable professional behaviour. Two opportunities exist where this can be addressed, one is the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act 1973 and 1976 Rules and the other, the Lawyers Welfare and protection Act 2023. So far, these instruments have not been utilised to address the issue of workplace harassment in context of legal guilds but I don’t see any reason why we should stop advocating for it.
Robert Williams: In traditional legal professions, historically characterized by a certain rigidity, the presence and representation of women at top decision-making levels remain a challenge. Can we speak today of a genuine democratization of access to the legal elite, or merely of a formal inclusion?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: Genuine democratization of access is a long way ahead. I will even go as far as saying that it is perhaps only aspirational at this stage because genuine democratization can only come when access is made fair and equitable keeping historical injustices and invisible barriers in mind to create a degree of operative equality for a level playing field, which simply does not exist at the moment. Even today, formal equality is used as an excuse to shut down our demands for affirmative action for increasing women’s representation in decision-making and leadership roles within the justice sector.
Those with power to bring the change, keep turning a blind eye to the barriers of access and unequal positions among men and women, urban and suburban, local and foreign qualified and other dimensions of intersectionalities, in fact, they at times keep raising the gates to continue to keep young lawyers, women and other marginalised voices out from such forums. For instance, since past three election cycles, the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act is being amended to raise the eligibility requirements for candidacy of provincial and Pakistan Bar Council elections that disproportionately impacts women and young lawyers and their representation in these forums.
Secondly, I think we must also understand the difference between access and power. Even where women may enter the profession but numbers alone do not necessarily mean that the profession has become genuinely democratic. The more important question is whether they are able to meaningfully participate in leadership roles and have equal access to the networks, opportunities, briefs, mentorship, support and sponsorships that can create the pathways for their equal advancement in the profession.
This is something we see quite clearly in our work through Women in Law. Women are increasingly present in the profession, especially at the entry level, but their representation becomes thinner as you move up the hierarchy so it is not just about entry but about their advancement and autonomy and this is where I think the idea of the ‘legal elite’ itself needs to be interrogated. If the same networks continue to determine who gets the best opportunities, who is nominated, who gets leadership positions and whose voice carries weight, then formal equality can coexist with very deep structural exclusion as well and we have seen how among men and women from privileged and underprivileged backgrounds or those with certain family names and relatives in the profession have had a headstart access to certain roles and opportunities within the profession.
Democratization has to happen at the very top, where current decisions are being made for it to trickle down to actual reforms creating genuine pathways for advancement for all. The demand and pressure has to come from the people themselves channelised in an organised manner for seeking accountability. So far, we are not close to that at all. Reforms are happening but they are happening by those already in power and with power to suit their own interests without much resistance from the people.
Robert Williams: . Looking back at your career and at the present global transformations in jurisprudence, what major changes do you observe in legal culture, and how complicated is it today to remain a catalyst for legal reform?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: Looking back at my career, I think one of the biggest changes has been that law is no longer seen as something entirely static or insulated from society. In Pakistan, particularly, our constitutional and jurisprudential debates have become much more visible and contested. Questions of fundamental rights, equality, judicial independence, constitutional interpretation and the relationship between Parliament and the judiciary are no longer confined to courtrooms or legal journals, they are part of public discourse.
At the same time, I think legal culture has become more conscious of the fact that law has to respond to social realities. We are seeing greater engagement with issues of gender, representation, technology, climate, human rights and access to justice. Pakistan’s constitutional history itself demonstrates that jurisprudence evolves through these tensions, as courts, Parliament, lawyers and civil society continually negotiate what constitutional principles mean in changing circumstances.
But being a catalyst for reform has perhaps become more complicated, not less. Reform is rarely just about identifying what the law should be. It is about navigating institutional resistance, competing interpretations of the Constitution, political pressures and sometimes deeply entrenched professional interests. The recent constitutional amendments in Pakistan and the debates surrounding judicial appointments and judicial independence are a good example of how difficult it is to separate questions of law from questions of institutional power.
For me, that makes evidence and constitutional grounding even more important. My approach has increasingly been to anchor reform in our own Constitution, our laws and our lived realities, rather than simply importing ideas from elsewhere. Whether it is gender equality, representation in the justice sector or institutional reform but what happens and what to do when that constitution, justice systems and those fundamental principles themselves are being redefined and reduced through power?
I think sustainable legal change has to be both principled and context-specific. In Pakistan’s case there are many anxieties that underlie reform proposals so they have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Not all reform has been geared towards strengthening rule of law and democracy. Some of it, like the 26th and 27th constitutional amendment has actually been very much against these ideals, but it has been possible due to a lot of polarization across political divide even among lawyers which makes reform complicated and vested in interests as opposed to principles. But that means we need more principled reformers, not less, you know people who can keep asking whose interests the law is serving, whose voices are missing and how constitutional principles can be translated into lived rights. That is harder in an increasingly contested legal environment, but it is also what makes the work meaningful.
Robert Williams: In an era of accelerated digitalization and artificial intelligence, emerging technologies tend to take over analytical tasks within the law. Do you believe technology can amplify neutrality, or might it perpetuate pre-existing structural biases of gender and class within judicial decision- making?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: AI is often marketed as an objective arbiter, free from human whim but it is built on past judgements that may reflect decades of systemic sexism or situate other pre existing structural biases of gender and class and present them as neutral or objective outcomes. So my fear is not just that it can perpetuate these biases but rather that it can read them into notion of objectivity and neutrality itself which will become harder to question. for instance, If an AI is trained on data where women’s testimony was valued less or where victims were blamed, it will not only replicate these biases, itwill amplify them.
For judges, this may create an ‘objectivity trap’ as they may face new pressures to align their rulings with AI predictions to appear objective. Deviating from a biased algorithm,even to deliver a more nuanced, gender-aware judgment, could be mischaracterised as ‘emotional’ or‘subjective’. In this environment, the competitive landscape shifts and judges are no longer just competing with their colleagues, but with the machine’s own biased expectations of what a correct ruling looks like. Reminds me of the time when I shared a life event with a friend in person and she didn’t believe me because it was not on facebook! If and what is likely to happen, outputs generated by AI will start being considered credible, even more so than the human in the loop’s own assessment, then the pressure to go with it will be immense.
So my concern is not that AI will become biased, it is that we may mistake technologically reproduced bias for neutrality. The more powerful these systems become, the more important it is to ensure that the inequalities of the past do not simply become the code of the future.
In Pakistan, there has been a large scale trial through a specially designed tool for judges to minimise hallucinations called JudgeGPT to study whether AI could boost efficiency and help the judges deal with the backlog of 2.26 million cases. One of the researchers reported that they found that the technology and appropriate training did improve efficiency for resolving cases by 6.3% with no obvious drop in quality of judgements but then again, the question arises, whose idea of ‘quality’ is it? Only a proper gender audit of the tech and its outcomes can help identify the extent to which past biases may be churrned out as objective outcomes. That does not mean we should reject technology.
In fact, AI can be an extraordinary tool for access to justice, it can help lawyers and judges process enormous volumes of material, identify inconsistencies, improve research and potentially make legal information more accessible, but the question is who designs these systems, what data they aretrained on, what assumptions are built into them and who remains accountable for the decision.
In February 2026, the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee approved of the first ‘National Guidelines for Use of Artificial Intelligence in Judicial Institutions of Pakistan at its 57th meeting. These guidelines serve as a strategic framework to modernize the country’s legal systemthrough technological integration. The guidelines outline how automated systems can assist with case management, legal research and administrative efficiency. Central to these policies is the requirement for human oversight, ensuring that machine-generated outputs never replace the final judgment or discretion of a judge. They emphasise ethical integrity, mandating that all AI applications remain transparent, protect data privacy and operate without algorithmic bias. By establishing these standardised benchmarks, the guidelines aim to reduce case backlogs while strictly preserving judicial independence and constitutional values.
These rules provide clear guidelinesfor provincial high courts to adopt digital tools in a responsible and accountable manner. Thus, for me, the answer is not to choose between technology and human judgment. It is to make technology more accountable, transparent and inclusive. We need diverse datasets, bias audits, transparency about how systems reach conclusions, and meaningful human oversight. Most importantly, weshould not outsource constitutional judgment to technology that cannot itself be held constitutionally accountable.
Robert Williams: As a lecturer and educator of future generations of legal professionals, do you believe that current legal education merely prepares young minds for technical compliance and mechanical application of the law, or does it equip them to become ethical leaders and societal reformers?
Nida Usman Chaudhary: I teach the University of London International Programme and have been a student of the same. The only subject where we really talked about the concept of law was jurisprudence and legal theory in our final year of the programme. Ethical questions in some topics of other subjects used to come up but legal positivism kept training us on how to separate law from morality and even from justice to understand primarily what law is as opposed to what it ought to be. Likewise, in our local law programme, the focus is again on rote learning and applying the law as opposed thinking critically about it.
I don’t think we have sufficient opportunity within our current legal education curriculum to delve deeper into ethical considerations but that is also reflective of how law works in practice, where it is meant to be applied or enforced as is, once it has passed through the stated process and becomes an Act of Parliament or a judicial precedent. In our legal education, we are not training students to question law as much as we are training them to interpret and apply it. I reckon that is primarily because we teach law in isolation of related social sciences. Perhaps, a well rounded legal education complimented with political science, philosophy and other social sciences can be a potent way forward towards more ethics-centered legal education.
This is particularly important in Pakistan, where our legal system is constantly evolving and constitutional questions are often deeply contested. Students need to understand that law does not operate in a vacuum. It interacts with politics, society, economics, culture and lived experience. They should be able to engage critically with the Constitution and jurisprudence rather than simply memorising the provisions.
I also think students need to see themselves as participants in the legal system, rather than passive recipients of it. Some of the most meaningful legal reforms have come from lawyers and legal academics who were willing to ask uncomfortable questions about existing practices and challenge established assumptions. Lord Denning has that unique distinction of being such a reformist who the students, studying the university of London LL.B Hons programme, admire immensely for this quality. So I think legal education needs to become more interdisciplinary, experiential and reflective.
Robert Williams: Thank you in advance for your time and for your willingness to contribute to a debate that is vital for the global legal community.
About Nida Usman Chaudhary
Nida Usman Chaudhary is an internationally acclaimed legal scholar, educator, and thought leader recognized globally for her pivotal contributions to gender equality, diversity, and legal reform.
Leadership & Founder Roles
- Founder: Women in Law Initiative Pakistan – A landmark national initiative dedicated to promoting women in the legal profession, fostering equality, and highlighting female leadership in law.
- Founder: Lahore Education and Research Network (LEARN) – An organization driving professional training, capacity building, and legal research.
- Former Chairperson: Gender Equality and Diversity Committee, Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA, 2018–2019).
International Honors & Awards
- Winner – Global Top 50 Professional & Career Women (Sri Lanka, 2023)
- Certificate of Recognition: Awarded by the Governor of Punjab on the occasion of the 75th Independence Day of Pakistan (2022)
- Justitia Laureate (Vienna, 2021): Recipient of the prestigious global Justitia Awards in the Academia (International) category, honoring exceptional women leaders in law.
- Femilist 100 Women from Global South: Recognized by The Gender Security Project (2021).
- Emerging Women Leader Award: Awarded by SewEGap / SEPLAA (2018).
Headquarters & Contact Information
- Address: Suite No. 33, First Floor, Sadiq Plaza, Shahrah-e-Quaid-e-Azam, Lahore, Pakistan
- Website: www.learnpak.com.pk
- Email: info@learnpak.com.pk
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