In debating Justice Chaudhry’s legacy, Pakistanis are divided between those who say he saved democracy and those who believe that he became a tyrant of sorts himself. Both views are supportable.

His departure is the third act in a wholesale change in the leaders who forged Pakistan’s tumultuous path in recent years. Since September, President Asif Ali Zardari and the head of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, have stepped down.

Now that Justice Chaudhry is going, how much of his legacy will endure depends partly on his successor, Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani. A less flamboyant figure, Justice Jillani will also have less time to act: He is due to retire when he reaches 65 in July.

Still, the significance of one act is beyond dispute: Justice Chaudhry’s refusal in March 2007 to step down after being fired by General Musharraf, who had raised him to the chief justice’s seat just two years before.

That gesture of defiance set Pakistan on a bracing new trajectory. It triggered a sweeping protest movement that, 18 months later, led to General Musharraf’s departure, but also promised something more profound: an end to the judiciary’s image as the handmaiden of military rulers.

For decades, pliant judges had rubber-stamped successive military takeovers in Pakistan. After he was reinstated as chief justice in 2009, Justice Chaudhry recast that relationship along new lines.

His weapon of choice was to act suo moto — a legal provision that empowers a judge to start a hearing on virtually any matter. Under Justice Chaudhry’s guidance, judges denounced political corruption, upbraided senior ministers and police officers in court, and intervened in a dizzying spectrum of public issues large and small, including the price of flour, Karachi’s traffic chaos and the plight of the country’s transsexuals.