348 Int. J. Human Rights and Constitutional Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2014 Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Separation of judiciary in Bangladesh Md. Abdul Karim School of Law, Z.H. Sikder University of Science and Technology, Modhupur, Kartikpur, Bhedorjong, Shariatpur, Bangladesh Email: abdulkarimlaw@gmail.com Abstract: Independent judiciary is a condition sine qua non of a democratic government. In a democratic state, state power rests on three separate organs, namely the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh vests executive power in the executive and legislative power in the parliament. Judicial power is vested in the judiciary both by tradition as well as by various provisions of the Constitution. The judiciary comprises all courts and tribunals, which performs the delicate task of ensuring rule of law in society. A social structure remains logical and solid with the aid of a sound judicial system. The judiciary redresses grievances of the people and resolves disputes. The dysfunction of judiciary impacts more severely than that of any other institution as it removes from the mind of people the sense of attachment to society. Although the judiciary was independent for sometimes at the colonial period, the colonial administration did not want to separate the judiciary permanently for their colonial interest. Keywords: independent of judiciary; separation of judiciary; judicial independent in the constitution; separation of the judiciary in the constitution; court structure in Bangladesh; composition and control of lower judiciary; judgement and 12 directions of Musder Hossain; composition of Judicial Service Commission and Judicial Pay Commission; barriers to separation. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Karim, M.A. (2014) ‘Separation of judiciary in Bangladesh’, Int. J. Human Rights and Constitutional Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp.348–356. Biographical notes: Md. Abdul Karim is working as a Lecturer at the Z.H. Sikder University of Science and Technology. He obtained his LLB (Honours) degree from the University of Information Technology and Sciences, Bangladesh, in 2010 and a generalised LLM degree from the same institution in 2011. This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Separation of judiciary: Bangladesh perspective’ presented at University of Information Technology and Sciences, Dhaka – 1212, Bangladesh, 15 June 2012. 1 Introduction In order to get fair justice, countrymen desire that the judiciary should be independent. Separation of powers is the precondition to independence of the judiciary. It was introduced in 18th century by the French philosopher Montesquieu [1689–1755] in his