Peshawar High Court

The Peshawar High Court is the provincial high court of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and the highest judicial institution of that province. It sits in the provincial capital Peshawar and, under the Constitution of Pakistan of 1973, holds a bench each at Abbottabad and Dera Ismail Khan. Article 199 of that constitution sets out its jurisdiction, which includes the power to issue writs such as habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari. The court is headed by a Chief Justice, assisted by justices and additional judges; the retirement age of the Chief Justice and justices is 62, and additional judges are first appointed for one year before being confirmed, extended or retired. Parliament passed a bill extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, one of the reforms that cleared the way for merging the tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Its institutional roots lie in the Judicial Commissioner arrangement made when the province was formally founded on 9 November 1901.