Law Reports Act, 1875

This 1875 Act regulates how court judgments can be cited and published as legal precedent in Pakistan. Section 3 provides that no court is bound to hear cited, or treat as binding authority, a report of a High Court decision unless it was published under the authority of a Provincial Government (i.e., an officially authorised law report series). Section 4 clarifies this doesn't change the actual legal authority of any judicial decision itself -- it only governs which published reports courts must recognise as citable authority.

Section 5, added by a 1989/1990 amendment, requires a court or tribunal to certify at the end of its judgment (using a form set out in the Schedule) whether the ruling establishes a new legal principle, decides a novel question of law, or distinguishes, overrules, reverses or explains a previous decision -- and this obligation extends beyond ordinary courts to the Federal Shariat Court, Service Tribunals, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, and the National Industrial Relations Commission.

Section 6 restricts publication: no judgment or order can be published or printed in a Law Report by any publisher or printer unless it has been approved for reporting by the deciding court/tribunal or certified under Section 5. Section 7 sets the penalty for violating this restriction: a fine up to one lac (100,000) rupees, or in default of payment, simple imprisonment up to six months, with all copies of the offending publication forfeited to the Provincial Government. Section 8 requires a written complaint from the presiding officer of the court/tribunal involved (or someone they authorise, including now a Bar Association or Bar Council office holder) before any court can take up such an offence, and reserves trial to a Court of Session or higher.

This Act, though dating to 1875, has been substantively updated as recently as 1990 and 2002 (per the extract's footnotes), and remains functionally relevant to how Pakistani law reports are published and cited today.