The Judiciary; The Public Services

Abstract

The question of an independent judiciary weighed heavily in the minds of the framers of the Constitution. It was alleged that politically minded judges had been appointed during the period of the First Republic; alternately that judges were subject to political pressures under threat of dismissal. The chief state counsel alleged before the special Presidential Commission investigating abuses of power by the 1972–1977 government that a Supreme Court judge, Justice Jaya Pathirana, was “the political stooge” of the Minister of Justice at the time.¹ Another Supreme Court justice (at the time retired), H. Deheragoda, in his evidence before the same Commission, stated that being the only judge of the Supreme Court to have been appointed to the Constitutional Court of the First Republic, he chose to resign from the latter body after the controversy as to whether the provision in the constitution of the First Republic that its decisions should be given in fourteen days was mandatory or directory for fear that he might be removed by the National State Assembly from the Supreme Court bench; he added that the three judges appointed to the Constitutional Court after the resignations of the first three judges were from the Supreme Court and were also “vulnerable to the provisions of the constitution.”² The ministry of justice of the 1977 U.N.P. government in a published statement of its achievements for the year 1977–1978 alleged that in 1974 when the Administration of Justice Law was brought into effect, “there was a fictitious termination of office of all those holding the posts of judicial officers; allegations were made that the fresh appointments were not necessarily in the order of the past seniority of the officers concerned.”³ The ministry noted that an inquiry was being conducted into these allegations.