Bangladesh's Parliament Passed a Law to Sack Its Own Supreme Court Judges — Then the Supreme Court Struck That Law Down and Sacked Itself From the Argument
Bangladesh — Judicial Affairs Profile
| 📅 Supreme Court Established | 1972 — Bangladesh's first constitution |
| 🏛️ Court Structure | Appellate Division + High Court Division |
| 🌍 Capital | Dhaka |
| ⚖️ Judicial Review Power | Article 102 — not explicitly named "judicial review" in the text |
| 🛡️ Judge Removal Mechanism | Supreme Judicial Council — restored by the court itself in 2017 |
| 🚨 Most Dramatic Ruling | 2017 — Supreme Court struck down parliament's power to remove Supreme Court judges |
In 2014, Bangladesh's parliament passed a constitutional amendment — unanimously, with no opposition votes — giving itself the power to remove Supreme Court judges. Three years later, the Supreme Court struck that amendment down as illegal. The Chief Justice who wrote the ruling left the country shortly afterward under pressure from the same government whose amendment he had just declared unconstitutional. The power to remove him, it turned out, now sat with no one in particular.
The Constitution Never Used the Words "Judicial Review" — But Built the Power In Anyway
Bangladesh's Supreme Court holds the power to strike down laws passed by parliament — but you won't find the term "judicial review" written anywhere in the constitution. The term is not expressly used in Bangladeshi law. Instead, Article 102 allows writ petitions to be filed at the High Court Division for reviewing the actions of public authorities. Articles 7(2), 26, 44(1) and 102 together are considered to indirectly support the system of judicial review.
Article 7(2) is the foundation on which everything else rests. It states that the constitution is the supreme law of the Republic, and if any other law is inconsistent with the constitution, that other law shall be void to the extent of its inconsistency. Unlike the United States, where judicial review was established not by the constitution but by the Supreme Court itself in 1803, Bangladesh wrote the underlying logic of constitutional supremacy directly into its founding document. The power to invalidate laws is implied, not invented.
The Court Used That Power to Strike Down Military Rule — and Restore What the Military Had Erased
Bangladesh's judicial review power has been tested against some of the country's most consequential political ruptures. In the Italian Marble Works case, the Supreme Court ruled against military rule and martial law, while simultaneously restoring secularist clauses of the original 1972 constitution that had been removed during the years of military government. It was a single ruling that invalidated a form of government and rewrote which version of the constitution was legally in force — at the same time.
Article 102 has also been used to enforce fundamental rights, strike down ordinances ending democratic local government, and set precedent for nullifying detentions under the Special Powers Act of 1974. In Secretary, Ministry of Finance v Masdar Hossain, the court curbed the government's power in judicial appointments and ordered the creation of the Bangladesh Judicial Service Commission — effectively redesigning the relationship between the executive branch and the judiciary through a single writ petition. Following that verdict, the judiciary was formally separated from the executive and legislative organs on November 1, 2007.
Bangladesh's Supreme Court Also Invented a Power the Constitution Never Wrote Down — Then Parliament Wrote It In
In 1989, in the case known as the 8th Amendment Case — Anwar Hossain Chowdhury v Bangladesh — the Supreme Court did something that had no explicit basis in the constitutional text. It declared that certain core features of the constitution could not be amended by parliament at all, no matter how large a majority voted for the change. This became known as the basic structure doctrine: the idea that a constitution has fundamental characteristics so essential to its identity that even the body empowered to amend the document cannot touch them.
The doctrine had no written home in the Bangladesh constitution at the time. The court derived it from the logic of constitutional supremacy and the structure of the document as a whole. Then in 2011, parliament went further and wrote the doctrine into the constitution itself through Article 7B, making the basic structure doctrine an explicit part of the written text. Bangladesh became the only country in the world where the basic structure doctrine — originally a judicial invention — is formally codified in the constitution as binding law.
Parliament Passed a Law to Control Judges — Unanimously — and the Judges Said No
On September 17, 2014, Bangladesh's parliament passed the 16th Amendment to the constitution without a single opposing vote. The amendment empowered parliament to remove Supreme Court judges for incompetence or misconduct by a two-thirds majority — a return, the government argued, to the original 1972 constitution, which had given parliament exactly that power before it was removed by the Fourth Amendment in 1975.
Nine Supreme Court lawyers filed a writ petition challenging the amendment within weeks of its passage. On May 5, 2016, a special High Court bench declared the amendment unconstitutional. The government appealed. A seven-member full bench of the Appellate Division, led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, upheld that ruling unanimously on July 3, 2017. The court's reasoning was pointed: because Article 70 of the Bangladesh constitution requires MPs to vote along strict party lines on pain of losing their seats, giving parliament the power to remove judges would effectively give the ruling party's leadership the power to remove any judge whose rulings displeased them. As the court put it, judges would be left at the mercy of the party high command. The Supreme Judicial Council — a body comprising the Chief Justice and two senior judges — was reinstated as the proper mechanism for removing errant judges.
The Chief Justice Who Wrote That Ruling Left the Country Under Circumstances That Were Never Fully Explained
What happened next illustrated, with uncomfortable clarity, the limits of judicial independence in practice. When the full 799-page verdict was released on August 1, 2017, the prime minister and senior ministers publicly criticized Chief Justice Sinha for hours. The Jatiya Sangsad passed a resolution on September 13 calling for legal steps to nullify the Supreme Court verdict. Five Appellate Division judges then stated they were unwilling to continue working with Sinha, citing eleven serious allegations including money laundering and financial misconduct. The details of those eleven charges were never made public.
Sinha went on leave from October 3. On October 13, 2017, he left Bangladesh for Australia — saying before departing that he was not sick but had been forced to leave, and that he would return. He did not. Nearly a month later, on November 11, he sent his resignation letter from Singapore. He later traveled to the United States before settling in Canada. The court that had just ruled that judges must be independent of the government had its own chief justice depart in a sequence that, in the words of many legal observers, demonstrated precisely the kind of pressure the ruling had been designed to prevent.
Article 7B Created a Lock — and Then Locked Itself Inside the Lock
Bangladesh's Article 7B, introduced in 2011, declared large sections of the constitution unamendable — including Parts I, II, and III, Article 150, and all provisions relating to the basic structure. It was designed to protect core democratic principles from being amended away by future parliamentary majorities. Legal scholars immediately noticed a logical paradox embedded in the clause itself.
Article 7B was itself introduced through the amendment process it was now restricting. The provision that declares certain things can never be amended was, itself, an amendment — it relied on the very power it was now prohibiting future parliaments from using. One legal analysis described it as a locked box with a note inside saying this box can never be opened, where the note was placed by opening the box. Critics also pointed out that Article 7B's broad scope — making even the designation of Dhaka as the capital unamendable — went far beyond protecting core democratic principles and instead froze a vast range of ordinary constitutional provisions permanently in place.
Public Interest Litigation Opened the Courts to Anyone — Not Just the Party With a Direct Grievance
One of the most consequential developments in Bangladesh's judicial history had nothing to do with constitutional amendments or military governments. In 1996, Justice Mustafa Kamal formally accepted public interest litigation for the first time in Bangladesh, in the case of Mohiuddin Farooque v Government of Bangladesh. The petitioner was the Secretary General of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, asking the court to enforce environmental policies in Tangail district where industrial activity was threatening flood control. Justice Kamal ruled that when a public injury or public wrong affecting an indeterminate number of people is involved, any citizen has the right to invoke the court's jurisdiction.
That single ruling transformed who could use Article 102. Before 1996, only parties with a direct personal grievance could file writ petitions. After it, associations, NGOs, and individual citizens could approach the High Court Division on behalf of the public — and the scope of judicial review expanded dramatically as a result. The 16th Amendment challenge itself was brought as a public interest litigation writ by nine Supreme Court lawyers, none of whom had a personal stake in the outcome. Without the 1996 ruling, that petition might never have been heard at all.
Judicial Affairs at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Supreme Court Established | 1972 (first constitution of Bangladesh) |
| Judicial Review Power | Article 102 — implied, not explicitly named |
| Basic Structure Doctrine Established | 1989 — Anwar Hossain Chowdhury case (8th Amendment Case) |
| Public Interest Litigation Accepted | 1996 — Mohiuddin Farooque v Government of Bangladesh |
| Judiciary Separated from Executive | November 1, 2007 (Masdar Hossain case) |
| Basic Structure Doctrine Codified (Article 7B) | 2011 — 15th Amendment (Bangladesh only country to do this) |
| 16th Amendment Passed (Parliament to Remove Judges) | September 17, 2014 — unanimous vote |
| High Court Declared 16th Amendment Illegal | May 5, 2016 |
| Appellate Division Upheld That Ruling | July 3, 2017 — 7-member bench, unanimous |
| Full 799-Page Verdict Released | August 1, 2017 |
| Chief Justice Sinha Left for Australia | October 13, 2017 |
| Sinha's Resignation Letter (from Singapore) | November 11, 2017 |
📥 Read About Bangladesh's Judicial System
Read the full text of the Constitution of Bangladesh, including Article 102 on judicial review and Article 7B on unamendable provisions:
👉 Read the Constitution of Bangladesh — Official Full Text (Bangladesh Laws)
A parliament that voted unanimously to control its own judges — then had that vote struck down unanimously by those same judges. A Chief Justice who wrote the ruling protecting judicial independence, then left for Australia on October 13 and resigned from Singapore a month later. A constitutional clause that locked itself inside its own lock. What part of Bangladesh's judicial story surprised you most? Tell us in the comments below.
This article reflects an editorial reading of publicly available constitutional text and reporting, intended for general understanding rather than legal interpretation. Readers are encouraged to consult the original constitutional text linked above to form their own view.
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