A trust funded by the royalties from Prof. G.L. Peiris’s ten books on Sri Lankan law has been formally established to finance legal research at the University of Colombo’s Faculty of Law and the Sri Lanka Law College.
The Professor G.L. Peiris Trust for Legal Education and Research was launched on 1 October at a ceremony in the Senate Hall of the University of Colombo, attended by President’s Counsel who were once his students, along with politicians, professionals, academics and family members, the Daily Mirror reported.
How it is funded
All royalties due on his publications are transferred directly to the fund. Peiris — a former Foreign Minister, and previously Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo and Dean of its Faculty of Law — has written ten books on Sri Lankan law, plus an account of the government’s peace process with the LTTE, in which he was the chief negotiator.
He also made a personal financial contribution on top of the royalties. Newswire reported the figure as Rs. 1 million, and said the Trust Deed was prepared by Paul Ratnayeke Associates and signed by Peiris as settlor.
The named trustees are University of Colombo Vice Chancellor Prof. Mahesh Indika Karunatilaka, Faculty of Law Dean Prof. Sampath Punchihewa, Law College Principal Prasantha Lal de Alwis, PC, and Dr Amanthi Bandusena, Peiris’s daughter. They may allocate resources to the two institutions according to need, with the money expected to go to legal research, symposia on contemporary issues, memorial lectures, moot courts and debating competitions.
Punchihewa used the ceremony to announce that the Faculty of Law will establish a Prof. G.L. Peiris Gold Medal for Criminal Law.
What he said
Peiris traced the Faculty’s history from the institution he entered as a student. There were then 17 students in the Department of Law, teaching was exclusively in English, and examinations included papers requiring a knowledge of Latin. Admission was regarded as an achievement in itself.
He then turned to the shift to instruction in the national languages, and to the argument that settled it. Opponents had warned standards would fall because there was too little legal literature in Sinhala and Tamil. The counter-argument was that changing the medium of instruction would itself create the demand for books, research and legal writing in those languages — which is the same mechanism this trust is meant to fund.
On the subsequent mass expansion of university education, he described new problems arriving with the larger intake, particularly accommodation for students from rural areas, and recalled the effort to build a women’s hostel.
Former Vice Chancellor and Emeritus Professor Savitri Goonesekera delivered the keynote address. Punchihewa and de Alwis also spoke.
This is the second stage, not the announcement
Peiris first said he would create such a fund in July, at the launch of the Sinhala-language legal journal Nitiya at the Sri Lanka Law College — coverage that circulated under headlines about a trust he would “establish”. The 1 October ceremony is the point at which the deed was actually signed and the trustees named. Readers encountering both should treat the July reports as the intention and this one as the execution.
Two details differ between the accounts: the Daily Mirror places the ceremony in the “Senate Hall” and Newswire in the “Senate House”, and it renders the keynote speaker’s name as Savithri Gunasekera. Newswire is not among the verified newsrooms LankaNewz counts toward its credibility rating.
Not reported
Neither account gives the expected annual income of the trust, how it will be split between the Faculty and the Law College, or when the first disbursements or the Gold Medal are due. Sri Lanka’s universities are meanwhile dealing with enrolment delays of up to 18 months.