The ousted chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court sought to rally lawyers Tuesday to continue street protests against President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule. Regional experts discuss the pivotal role lawyers are playing in the protests and assess the latest developments in the crisis. ...

MARGARET WARNER: What's your view, Steve Coll, of the prominent role lawyers are taking in this?

STEVE COLL, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: I think they started out as an angry minority, enflamed by President Musharraf's decision to sack the chief justice of the Supreme Court. And for some of the reasons Husain has outlined, they've now become the front of a much broader political opposition. They're attempting to restore a judiciary that has been really badly weakened over the last 20 years. They are defending a constitution, but we should be clear Pakistan's constitution is quite an unstable document. What they really express is a kind of national wish that there be a stable constitutional order and a system of reliable rule of law. And in that sense, they've become a vanguard for a much broader movement to restore civilian rule. ...

MARGARET WARNER: So, Steve, we saw today [Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry] rallying lawyers -- well, he's under house arrest -- by cell phone. How central a figure is he now in this unfolding drama?

STEVE COLL: Well, he's cast himself as a political leader. He's moved beyond his judicial role, and he's trying to call people into the streets. In that sense, he now joins Benazir Bhutto, who has a proven record of being able to draw followers in a street, as a kind of broker at a pivotal moment. What happens next I think depends to some extent on how broad and how sustained popular protests against this emergency becomes. He clearly was calling Pakistanis of all kinds to make "sacrifices." And he used that word knowing that any street protest is likely to generate violence. There's already been a number of instances this year where security forces have fired on protesters and killed unarmed civilians. So if he succeeds in calling his followers into the street, he's inviting them to participate in a potentially dangerous movement. ...

To listen to the audio of this interview, please follow this link and visit the NewsHour website. Steve Coll is President and CEO of New America Foundation.