the moderate and liberal leanings in their jurisprudence strongly disagreed with Bhutto's sentence of Capital punishment. On the other hand, Chief Justice Haq, Justice N.H. Shah, Justice Waheedudin Ahmad, and Justice Kaisar Khan, were described as having conservative/texualist ideology in their rulings and found Bhutto suitable for capital punishment; hence, marking a split decision by 4:3. In 1993, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto controversially elevated the Supreme Court jurist, SA Shah, who had known for his liberal jurisprudence, as Chief Justice over two senior ranking jurists at the Supreme Court. However, Justice Shah's judicial leanings did not protected the Benazir' administration when it was dismissed by President Farooq Leghari over allegations on corruption. In 1997, judicial crises reached its peak when Supreme Judicial Council took up the case against Justice Shah's appointment who eventually resigned from his office and succeeded by conservative jurist Ajmal Mian, only to be replaced with conservative jurist Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui as the new Chief Justice. On 12 October 1999, the Supreme Court partially validated the martial law in the light of "doctrine of necessity" on the technicality but Chief Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui decided to hear the petitions over the legality of the martial law. Although, the Supreme Court had only validated the martial law for three-years only, the Supreme Court's jurists and Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui in clear view of this coup as a "violation of constitution" as Sharif's lawyers made a ground base for finding Musharraf of treason. General Musharraf, acting as Chief Executive, forcefully retired the conservative leaning jurists and elevated the judges who had known to have libertarian views in their jurisprudence at the Supreme Court, including Justice Irshad Hasan as Chief Justice. In 2002, The Supreme Court supervised the general elections successfully oversaw the transition of power from the office of Chief Executive to Prime minister. The legalization of Contempt of court act further strengthened the judicial independence of the Supreme Court in 2004 when Shaukat Aziz became prime minister. Court composition The justices and jurists of the supreme court are set to retire at the age of 65, unless the jurists sooner resign or are removed from office, or records written reasons for deviating from this rule in accordance with the Constitution. By an act of parliament of 1997, there is a fixed number of justices at 17 and, as of current, there are currently sixteen judges and one vacancy that is yet