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Freedom of Speech, Jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and Challenges

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Late RKW Goonesekere’s contributions to Sri Lanka’s law and legal professionntributions to Sri Lanka’s law and legal profession

Justice Yasantha Kodagoda, PC.

It was a few weeks ago that Professor Savitri Goonesekere contacted me and informed me that a decision had been taken by the Deshamanya R.K.W. Goonesekere Endowment in consultation with the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo to invite me to deliver this year’s Deshamanya R.K.W. Goonesekere Memorial Oration. She requested me to oblige, which invitation I readily accepted.

Having accepted the honour bestowed on me, I started to think of a suitable topic for the Oration. It did not take me long to provisionally identify a topic associated with a story, which I have been yearning for quite some time to tell in public to an audience learned in the law. It relates to the very last case which Mr. Goonesekere argued in the Supreme Court.

When I queried from Mr. Goonesekere’s longtime junior and my friend President’s Counsel Mr. Crishantha Weliamuna presently living in Australia, he confirmed that the case referred to by me was in fact the last case which Mr. Goonesekere fully argued, and that after arguing that case, Mr. Goonesekere remained in active and regular practice only for a brief period. As I understand, his departure from regular practice had been for multiple reasons, which I have been told by those near and dear to him, included the dissatisfaction that had developed in his mind over the years regarding the manner in which administration of justice was being carried out by some during that era.

The story relating to this particular case and its outcome is special to me, particularly since, I had the distinct honour of having been pitted against Mr. Goonesekere in that last case, which he so valiantly argued. I assume he put in so much of effort into that case mostly due to the underlying cause he truly believed in. The impact of Mr. Goonesekere’s submissions were such, that during the argument, I had to question my own conscience regarding the stance I was required to take on behalf of the State.

However, as I was privy to certain facts which could not be revealed publicly in Court, I was convinced that it was my professional duty to argue that case in the manner I did. I recall vividly how Professor Savitri Goonesekere and Ms. Surya Wickremasinghe who flanked Mr. Goonesekere at the Bar table on either of his sides were visibly annoyed with me due to some of my utterances. That is of course besides the point. While formulating the script of the memorial oration founded upon that particular case, I received a message from Professor Kokila Konasinghe. I was politely told that Professor Savitri Goonesekere who we all know is the beloved wife of late Mr. Goonesekere, would be pleased to listen to me speak on the fundamental right to free speech. Therefore, I decided to change the topic, and speak to you regarding freedom of speech, as I considered it as my duty to accede to the request of Professor Goonesekere, whom I respect most sincerely.

RKW Goonesekere

That abruptly ended my plan to talk to you today regarding the last case which Mr. Goonesekere argued before the Supreme Court, that being the case of Nallaratnam Singarasa vs. The Attorney-General, belatedly reported in 2013 Volume I of Sri Lanka Law Reports at page 245. My original decision to speak to you regarding that case, was not purely due to my desire to have myself vindicated from the slur that was cast on me by some who exercised their right to free speech regarding that case and its judgment, but since I felt that it was my duty to place before a learned audience of the public, certain important legal and factual aspects relating to that case and about Nallaratnam Singarasa himself, which are so far not in the public domain. Anyhow, that is for another day.

Before I delve into the topic assigned to me, I shall briefly though, refer to the life and career of the gentleman in whose memory we are gathered here this evening. Rajendra Kalidas Wimala Goonesekere was born on May 8, 1928. After his primary and secondary education at Royal College Colombo, in 1950 he entered the University of Ceylon’s Department of Law newly established at that time in Peradeniya, and read for the Bachelor’s degree in Law. It is said that Mr. Goonesekere along with onetime Attorney-General who recently passed away – Mr. Shiva Pasupathi, PC, onetime Inspector General of Police Mr. Ana Seneviratne and one Mr. Hema Rupasinghe who had later become a leading Advocate, comprised the first batch of students who were admitted to study law in Peradeniya.

Coincidentally, Professor Savitri Goonesekere belonged to the last batch of students who started reading for the law degree in Peradeniya and concluded bachelors’ studies following the then Department of Law being shifted to Colombo in the early 1960s.

After Mr. Goonesekere obtained the LL.B degree from the University of Ceylon with honours, he joined the Sri Lanka Law College, passed his Bar exams, and on September 2, 1954 was called to the Bar as an Advocate of the Supreme Court. Instead of practicing law, in pursuit of academic excellence, during that same year, he proceeded to the United Kingdom, and gained admission to the prestigious University of Oxford and read for a Master’s degree in Law, which to-date for historic reasons is called the Bachelors’ Degree in Civil Laws (BCL).

Having returned to the country, he functioned initially as a Lecturer and later as a Senior Lecturer initially at the Department of Law in Peradeniya and later at the Faculty of Law in Colombo. He lectured a generation of law students which included those who later became iconic academic and professional giants in the field of law such as Emeritus Professor of Law of the National University of Singapore Professor M. Sornarajah, Emeritus Professor of Law and leading politician Professor G. L. Pieris, Justices of the Supreme Court Justice Mark Fernando and Justice Dr. A.R.B. Amerasinghe, and of course Professor Savitri Goonesekere, herself. In a tribute to Mr. Goonesekere published in 2015, Professor Sornarajah has referred to him as “Magister Magistrorum” – the teacher of teachers. In 1966, Mr. Goonesekere was appointed as the Principal of the Sri Lanka Law College. President’s Counsel, the late Hemantha Warnakulasuriya writing a tribute to Mr. Goonesekere has explained how much students loved and respected him. As you know it was in 1973 that the legal profession was fused into one by the enactment of the Administration of Justice Law. That necessitated the Law College to also amalgamate the Advocates course and the Proctors course which had been running for a very long period of time, and provide a uniform course of study leading to successful students being admitted to the Bar as Attorneys-at-Law.

I have been told that it was due to the untiring efforts of Mr. Goonesekere that this transition from the previous system of legal education to the new one, took place smoothly, without any interruption. It was also during the period of Mr. Goonesekere, that the Law College had been required to convert the medium of teaching law from English to ‘Swabhasha’. Mr. Goonesekere had made all necessary arrangements to give effect to the policy of the government, and the medium of education had been changed to ‘Swabhasha’.

However, I am almost sure that being a great visionary, Mr. Goonesekere would have implemented the then government’s policy of delivering tertiary education in the vernacular languages, much against his own personal views on the matter. By that change, a single community of lawyers who could practice the law in both English and their own respective vernacular language, gradually became two communities of lawyers, those who could fluently practice in both English and either Sinhala or Tamil, and those who could practice only in their respective vernacular language.

Till 1974, Mr. Goonesekere served that great institution which is now 150 years old, with great distinction. I have learnt that Mr. Goonesekere’s final years as the Principal of the Law College was not smooth. That was due to a certain highly powerful and authoritarian figure in the justice sector of that government taking offence at some articles written and published by Mr. Goonesekere in his capacity as the Chairman of the Civil Rights Movement.

Those articles written in the exercise of Mr. Goonesekere’s right to free speech, were critical of the unconventional criminal justice response enforced by the then government by enacting the Criminal Justice Commission Law against youth alleged to have been involved in the 1971 JVP insurrection. He called that process, “A new kind of justice”.

It is necessary to place on record, that the new law enacted post facto to deal with the investigation, filing and prosecution of criminal cases against suspected insurgents, provided for the establishment of a tribunal called the Criminal Justice Commission with penal jurisdiction, instead of causing the cases to be heard before routine courts vested with criminal jurisdiction. This law

also provided for statements made by accused to any police officer under any circumstances, to be admissible against them at the trials conducted against them.

So, to me, it was quite natural for a human rights activist in the calibre of Mr. Goonesekere to be concerned about the new and temporary system of criminal justice that had been put in place.

As a result of his articles, some key members of the Incorporated Council of Legal Education heavily influenced by the dictates of that powerful person in authority, had made several unfounded allegations against Mr. Goonesekere, which led to a series of events taking place in rapid succession, finally resulting in Mr. Goonesekere’s resignation from the post of Principal of the Law College in June 1974. Thus, ended the second phase of Mr. Goonesekere’s career.

That year Mr. Goonesekere entered the private bar and commenced private practice in Colombo, Matara and Kurunegala. But that was only for a brief period, and in 1976, as he was more interested in being involved in teaching the law, he applied for and obtained an appointment as Associate Professor of Law at the Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and left the country.

It is six years thereafter in 1982, that Mr. Goonesekere returned to the country and commenced active practice, which he continued with great eminence till 2006.

His practice centered on the application of Public Law and in particular, Fundamental Rights Law, Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. He also handled a few other cases in the appellate courts which involved Land Law.

Almost all his cases were argued before the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. I have been told by seniors that, at one point of time, almost all judges of the Supreme Court before whom Mr. Goonesekere appeared, were either

students of his at the Law Faculty or at the Law College. I have personally witnessed Mr. Goonesekere presenting and arguing cases before the Supreme Court. To-date I recall with a great sense of admiration and respect, the manner in which he argued cases, successfully convinced judges regarding the virtues of his case and his client, and handled with ease both judges who displayed a friendly disposition towards him, as well as others who could easily be labelled as being hostile towards him.

At the time Mr. Goonesekere entered active practice of the law in the mid-80s, the fundamental rights jurisdiction was still new in the country. Judges of the Supreme Court had to engage in an acute learning curve on the nature and scope of each of the fundamental rights that had been made justiciable by the second republican Constitution of 1978, and regarding judicial precedent from comparable jurisdictions which contained persuasive dicta.

Mr. Goonesekere, being well learned in jurisprudence developed by the Supreme Court of India and of the United States of America, as well as by the Strasbourg court on Human Rights had made significant contributions.

(To be continued)


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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

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9 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

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Features

Why Pi Day?

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9 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

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Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

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1 day ago

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2026/03/12

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A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.

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