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Research · Supreme Court of Pakistan

Supreme Court Statistics

Aggregate patterns across the published, reasoned judgments of the Supreme Court of Pakistan: 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 Supreme Court of Pakistan has published on its public portal at www.supremecourt.gov.pk . The set covers 1991 to 2026 and holds 3,700+ reported judgments.

These are not all the matters the Supreme Court of Pakistan handles. 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 184
Article 184 is the most frequently cited Article of the Constitution, appearing in 15 judgments , ahead of Article 185 at 10.
Primary Citations
44.9% / 22.4%
44.9% of these judgments cite the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973. 22.4% cite the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860.
Length and Duration
6 pages, 1 yr
The median judgment runs 6 pages and about 1,900 words. The median gap between the year a matter was filed and the year judgment issued is about 1 years.
Bench Composition
1.6%
Of the judgments whose bench could be identified, 1.6% were authored by a single judge, 30.1% by a division bench and 68.3% by a full or larger bench.

Caseload composition by legal division

Constitutional (54.29%) Criminal (21.33%) Civil (24.38%)
Caseload composition by legal division across 3,700+ reported judgments of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Most cited statutes

Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 1896 Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 905 Pakistan Penal Code, 1860 848 Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 535 Civil Servants Act, 1973 382 Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 235 Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 208 Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 174 Control of Narcotic Substances Act, 1997 137 Limitation Act, 1908 135
The statutes cited most often across these judgments.

Most frequent constitution petition respondents

Federation of Pakistan 205 Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) 16 Capital Development Authority (CDA) 4 Government of Pakistan 4 The President of Pakistan, Pak Secretariat, Isl... 3 Haris Steel Industries (Pvt) Ltd & others 3 Federal Government through Secretary Ministry o... 3 The State 2 Pakistan Bar Council, through its Secretary, Is... 2 The President of Pakistan 2
The entities most often named as respondent in a constitution petition. Useful as a prior when settling the array of respondents in a fresh petition.

Judgment volume by year

0 125 250 375 500 1991 2003 2005 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 * * 2026
* 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 2026-09-08.