By Firdous MHM –

Series: Rule by Law in Constitutional Clothing: Judicial Independence, the 1978 Preamble and the 22nd Amendment Debate in Sri Lanka

In brief: The Twenty-Second Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution, passed in September 2026, extended the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 65 to 67 and Court of Appeal judges from 63 to 65. The ensuing debate was conducted almost entirely in terms of tenure, personnel and the perceived motive of retaining an incumbent Chief Justice. This first part argues that both the case for and the case against the Amendment were tactical: each was driven by expectations about the outcome of particular litigation rather than by a principled conception of the rule of law.

Introduction

Sri Lanka’s constitutional debates have a recurring pattern. A government with a large parliamentary majority proposes an amendment touching the courts. The legal profession objects in the name of judicial independence. Supporters reply in the name of efficiency or accountability. The amendment passes or fails, and the structure within which judges work is left as it was.

The Twenty-Second Amendment of 2026 followed this pattern closely. Its central provision extends the retirement ages of the superior court judges by two years. It also caps the Chief Justice’s term at six years and enlarges the Court of Appeal from 19 to 24 judges. A companion Judicature (Amendment) Bill raises retirement ages in the lower courts.

This three-part series makes three claims. First, both camps in the debate argued tactically. Their positions tracked expected outcomes in pending litigation, especially high-profile accountability cases, rather than a principled account of the rule of law (this part).

Second, the most theoretically ambitious contribution, Asanga Welikala’s account of judicial independence as an “inceptional value” written into the 1978 Preamble, rests on a mistaken premise (Part 2). The 1978 Constitution, read with its Preamble, is better understood as a charter of rule by law. It deploys the vocabulary of democracy, rights and judicial independence while its operative provisions concentrate power in the executive, make legislation final, and place the judiciary below both (Part 3).

Third, the judiciary has contributed to its own subordination through doctrines of deference, unreasoned gatekeeping and non-justiciability. It retains interpretive resources to do otherwise. Part 3 closes with a reform agenda that would serve the rule of law irrespective of the age at which judges retire.

The series draws on commentary published in Colombo Telegraph, statements by legal bodies and senior counsel, the Centre for Policy Alternatives’ (CPA) statement and Supreme Court petition, and the three presentations at the CPA Seminar on Judicial Independence.

The Twenty-Second Amendment and the shape of the debate

The proposal surfaced in May 2026. The BASL wrote to the President on 25 May, before any Bill existed. Cabinet approved the proposal on 27 July, the Bill was gazetted on 7 August and tabled on 18 August, and Parliament passed it on 25 September by 158 votes to 62.

The Government justified the measure by reference to a backlog of about 1.1 million cases and the need to retain experienced judges as courts expand. In its reply to the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, it rejected the suggestion that the change apply only to future appointees, on the ground that this would defeat its purpose.

The debate’s principal contributions are summarised below.

Table 1. Principal contributions to the Twenty-Second Amendment debate, May–September 2026

Contributor and forum	Position	Core argument
Lionel Bopage, Colombo Telegraph, 3 Aug 2026	Qualified support	Continuity protects accountability cases; temporary only
Murali Vallipuranathan, Colombo Telegraph, 19 Aug 2026	Support	Ageing population, backlog, foreign comparators
Sarath de Alwis, Colombo Telegraph, 25 Aug 2026	Support	Bar opposition defends an elite establishment
Hatch PC, Weerakoon PC and the Attorney General, Supreme Court, 2 Sep 2026	Support	Article 107(5) not entrenched; efficiency
Piyadasa Edirisuriya, Colombo Telegraph, 3 Aug 2026	Conditional	Efficiency gains if applied to future judges only
Roshan Pussewela, Colombo Telegraph, 19 Aug 2026	Conditional	Convictions must not appear engineered
BASL and regional Bar associations, from 25 May 2026	Opposition	Referendum required; promotions blocked
Lawyers’ Collective, 6 Jun 2026	Opposition	Court-packing and court capture
Centre for Policy Alternatives, 15 Jun and SC SD 50/2026	Opposition	Tenure must be prospective; Article 3
Nihal Jayawickrama, Colombo Telegraph, 2 Aug 2026	Opposition	Tenure fixed at constitution-making; targets the Chief Justice
Rajan Philips, Colombo Telegraph, 2 Aug 2026	Opposition	Let the Chief Justice retire; appoint on merit
S. I. Keethaponcalan, Colombo Telegraph, 19 Aug 2026	Opposition	Original proposal exposes motive
Asanga Welikala, CPA Seminar	Opposition	Judicial independence as an “inceptional value”
Rohan Edrisinha, CPA Seminar	Opposition in context	No mandate; constitutional backsliding

Tactical constitutionalism

The term tactical constitutionalism is used here for argument whose conclusion is fixed by the expected outcome of particular disputes, and whose constitutional vocabulary is chosen to fit. Both sides of the Twenty-Second Amendment debate argued in this way.

The case for: outcomes presented as efficiency

The Government’s public justification for the Amendment was institutional efficiency: retaining experienced judges would accelerate the disposal of a backlog of some 1.1 million cases. Beneath this stated rationale lay an operative one, articulated more candidly by the Amendment’s supporters outside government. That rationale was the preservation of a particular bench while prosecutions of former office-holders run their course. Bopage defends the extension expressly as a temporary measure to protect “landmark cases” already in motion. Vallipuranathan attributes opposition to apprehension of “swift legal accountability”, and de Alwis characterises the Bar’s resistance as the self-defence of a legal elite. Whatever their individual merits, each of these arguments justifies a constitutional amendment by reference to the anticipated outcome of identifiable litigation, not to any general principle of judicial organisation.

The efficiency rationale does not withstand scrutiny. Edirisuriya’s illustrative estimate of 50,000 to 60,000 additional disposals assumes that about one hundred judges each continue to dispose of 250 to 300 cases a year for two further years. The constitutional amendment, however, extends the tenure only of the superior courts, some forty judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. Their work consists predominantly of appeals, writs and constitutional matters rather than first-instance trials. The backlog, by contrast, is concentrated in the Magistrates’ and District Courts, as Saliya Peiris PC observed. Neither the Government nor its supporters answered that objection. The mismatch between the remedy proposed and the problem it is said to address suggests that efficiency served as the justification for the Amendment rather than its reason.

The comparative argument is equally selective. Hatch, Weerakoon and Vallipuranathan point to judicial retirement ages of 75 in the United Kingdom and Canada and 70 in Australia. Those figures do not stand alone. In each jurisdiction, longer judicial tenure operates within a framework of review that constrains the political branches. Courts in Canada and Australia may invalidate legislation that exceeds constitutional limits, and courts in the United Kingdom may declare legislation incompatible with Convention rights under the Human Rights Act 1998. The Amendment borrows the comparative retirement age while omitting the institutional architecture that gives long tenure its constitutional rationale. Under Article 80(3), no court may question an enacted law, so a longer-serving bench extends the tenure of judges without extending their capacity to check power.

The case against: principle in language, personnel in substance

The opponents spoke the language of principle, but their remedy was confined to stopping this Amendment. Jayawickrama, Philips and Keethaponcalan converge on the inference that the measure is designed to retain the incumbent Chief Justice. Jayawickrama’s alternative is revealing: that the President let the Chief Justice retire and choose “an individual acceptable to him”. That is a different route to executive influence over the bench, not a safeguard against it.

The BASL, the Lawyers’ Collective and the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association rest their case on the appearance of independence. That is a sound principle, but it measures independence by how the bench looks rather than by whether citizens can reach it and receive reasoned decisions. The Judicial Service Association and High Court Lawyers’ Association add concerns about promotions, which are legitimate institutional interests of the profession rather than of the public.

The referendum argument is the clearest example. The CPA petition and the BASL rely on the 2022 determination on the Inland Revenue (Amendment) Bill, which read Article 3 to require a referendum for any change to incumbent judges’ tenure. The Court has thus read popular sovereignty expansively to protect judicial tenure. It has not read Article 3 with comparable vigour to protect the citizen’s access to its own jurisdiction.

The shared premise

Both camps assume the decisive question is which judges decide. The suspicion voiced by opposition figures and commentators illustrates this: they fear that a retained, government-friendly bench could refuse leave to proceed in fundamental rights and public interest cases against the State. If that fear is real, the danger lies in a power to refuse leave without reasons. Any bench, at any retirement age, holds that power, and neither side proposed to limit it.

Two features of the Amendment also passed with little principled analysis. The six-year cap on the Chief Justice’s term is a structural limit on personalised tenure. The four unfilled vacancies on each of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal point to an appointments process that is not functioning. Both deserved scrutiny in their own right.

Next in this series — Part 2: Rule by Law in Constitutional Clothing. The most sophisticated defence of judicial independence in the debate came from Asanga Welikala, who argued that judicial independence is an “inceptional value” of Sri Lankan constitutional modernity, enshrined in the 1978 Preamble. Part 2 sets out that thesis in its strongest form and argues that its premise does not hold.

Sources for Part 1

Bopage, L. ‘Beyond The Bench’, Colombo Telegraph, 3 August 2026

Centre for Policy Alternatives, Statement on Reports of a Constitutional Amendment to Extend the Term of Office of the Chief Justice, 15 June 2026

Centre for Policy Alternatives and Saravanamuttu v Attorney General, SC SD 50/2026

de Alwis, S. ‘Whose Courthouse? People’s Or BASL’s?’, Colombo Telegraph, 25 August 2026

Edirisuriya, P. ‘Extending The Retirement Age Of Judges’, Colombo Telegraph, 3 August 2026

Edrisinha, R. CPA Seminar on Judicial Independence (video)

Jayawickrama, N. ‘Judicial Independence Under Threat’, Colombo Telegraph, 2 August 2026

Keethaponcalan, S. I. ’22nd Amendment: A Problem?’, Colombo Telegraph, 19 August 2026

Lawyers’ Collective, Statement on the proposed extension of the retirement age of Judges, Colombo Telegraph, 6 June 2026

Philips, R. ‘Judicious Way Out Of A Judicial Fiasco’, Colombo Telegraph, 2 August 2026

Pussewela, R. ‘The 22nd Amendment: Justice, Yes – But Not At Any Cost’, Colombo Telegraph, 19 August 2026

Vallipuranathan, M. ‘Rationalizing Judicial Retirement Ages’, Colombo Telegraph, 19 August 2026

Welikala, A. CPA Seminar on Judicial Independence (video)

In re Inland Revenue (Amendment) Bill, SC SD 64–71/2022

AG tells SC 22nd Amendment does not require referendum, Daily Mirror, 3 September 2026

Judge retirement extensions within ICCPR, judicial independence principles: Govt, Counterpoint, 29 August 2026

Leading Presidents’ Counsel voice serious concerns, Daily Mirror, 28 July 2026

Parliament passes 22A, Daily FT, 26 September 2026

What happened in court? 22A hearings conclude, News 1st, 2 September 2026