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ISLAMABAD: The Federal Consti­tutional Court (FCC) formally commenced on Friday after its chief justice and four judges took oath, though the proceedings were overshadowed by a boycott from five senior judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) and questions are being raised over what principle, if any, guided these appointments.

Critics point out that if seniority was the yardstick, none of the appointees — except Justice Aminuddin Khan, who has been elevated as chief justice of the FCC — is senior to members of the now-defunct Constitutional Bench (CB) of the Supreme Court, several of whom have been ignored.

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This, they argue, is done in contrast to the spirit of the 1996 Al-Jihad Trust case, which ruled that appointments to the superior courts should be transparent so that litigants and the people at large retain faith in the independence of the judiciary.

If constitutional expertise was the criterion, none of these judges is known for pursuing constitutional matters in their practice as lawyers or has to their credit any significant constitutional judg