Autocratic Legalism: A Fireside Chat Between Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Professor Samuel Issacharoff

What happens when a constitutional court is stripped of the authority to protect the very constitution it is sworn to uphold? On November 13, 2025, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah resigned from the Supreme Court of Pakistan in protest of the 27th Constitutional Amendment, an act of constitutional conscience widely regarded as extraordinary in the history of Pakistani jurisprudence.

Join us for a fireside chat between Justice Shah and Professor Samuel Issacharoff, one of the world's leading scholars on fragile democracies and constitutional courts, for a conversation on the role of the judiciary as an anchor of democratic order, the phenomenon of autocratic legalism, and what the Pakistani constitutional crisis reveals about the fragility of courts everywhere, including in the United States.