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Research · Pakistan

Pakistan Court Statistics

Aggregate patterns across the published, reasoned judgments of the eight courts in this database: caseload composition, the statutes cited most often, who is most often named as respondent, and how judgment volume and bench composition have moved over time.

Every figure below is an aggregate computed across the whole set. No individual judgment, litigant, or case specific detail is reported here, and no judgment is quoted or summarised. To read case specific summaries and holdings, use the Case Law Database. To see who is currently sitting on this court, use Court Benches and Statistics.

Data scope: these figures are computed from the reasoned written judgments the eight courts in this database have published on their own public portals. The set covers 1980 to 2026 and holds 45,000+ reported judgments.

These are not all the matters these courts handle. Courts dispose of a large volume of cases through procedural orders, adjournments, dismissals for non prosecution, withdrawals and short orders that are never authored as detailed written judgments. Only the reasoned judgments approved for publication are counted here.

What you are reading is the published precedent surface, not the total caseload. It is the same body of material an advocate would consult by hand when researching a matter, aggregated.

Constitutional Practice
Article 199
Article 199 is the most frequently cited Article of the Constitution, appearing in 4,000+ judgments, ahead of Article 4 at 800+.
Primary Citations
34.4% / 26.5%
34.4% of these judgments cite the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973. 26.5% cite the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860.
Length and Duration
6 pages, 1 yr
The median judgment runs 6 pages and about 1,700 words. The median gap between the year a matter was filed and the year judgment issued is about 1 year.
Bench Composition
64.8%
Of the judgments whose bench could be identified, 64.8% were authored by a single judge, 28.1% by a division bench and 7.2% by a full or larger bench.

Caseload composition by legal division

Caseload composition by legal division across 45,000+ reported judgments from all eight courts.

Most cited statutes

  1. Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 27,000+
  2. Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 20,000+
  3. Pakistan Penal Code, 1860 18,000+
  4. Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 13,000+
  5. Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 4,000+
  6. Control of Narcotic Substances Act, 1997 2,000+
  7. Civil Servants Act, 1973 2,000+
  8. Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 2,000+
  9. Limitation Act, 1908 2,000+
  10. Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 1,000+
The statutes cited most often across these judgments.

Most frequent constitutional petition respondents

  1. Federation of Pakistan 2,000+
  2. Government of Balochistan 900+
  3. Province of Sindh & others 700+
  4. Province of Sindh 600+
  5. Police 300+
  6. Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) 200+
  7. National Accountability Bureau (NAB) 200+
  8. Government of Sindh 200+
  9. Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 200+
  10. The State 100+
The entities most often named as respondent in a constitutional petition. Useful as a prior when settling the array of respondents in a fresh petition.

Judgment volume by year

* The most recent years reflect ongoing publishing lag and must not be read as a fall in case volume. A judgment is published months after it is delivered.

Methodology. Judgments are captured from each court's own public portal. Statute names are canonicalised across stylistic variants before counting, so one Act cited six different ways counts as one Act. Constitutional article and Penal Code section frequencies are read from the cited statutes recorded against each judgment. Time from filing to judgment is the judgment year minus the filing year taken from the case number, a proxy that does not reflect docket level dates. Bench size is read from the bench recorded on each judgment, and judgments whose bench could not be identified are excluded from that percentage rather than counted as single judge. Recent years reflect publishing lag and are excluded from any trend statement. Figures last computed 2026-09-12.