Supreme Court Justice Yasantha Kodagoda has described the delay in the administration of justice as the “slow poison of our entire system of justice” and a key driver of declining public confidence in the courts, the Sunday Times reported.
Justice Kodagoda made the remarks in his address at the 52nd Convocation of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) on May 10. He said practising lawyers were not primarily responsible for delays — most were ready to argue cases or present evidence — and that the bottleneck lay with the courts themselves.
“In my view, the problem lies primarily in the sheer unbearable volume of work that all of us have to handle and the limited infrastructure-related and human-resource capacity of the system of justice,” he said.
The Supreme Court Justice noted the case-clog had built up over several decades and could not be resolved overnight. “We must increase the capacity of the court system to handle the present and also the predictable future volume of work.”
Kodagoda urged a co-operative effort across the bench, the bar, policymakers, court administrators and other service providers to identify and implement reforms aimed at converting the justice-delivery system into “an efficient, robust, expeditious and fair system.”
The convocation also featured a guest lecture by former Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai on the “Role of the Independent Bar in Protecting the Constitution and the Citizens.” Gavai praised the BASL for preserving “both dignity and relevance” over five decades.
The intervention follows the Ministry of Justice’s disclosure that 1,134,474 cases were pending across 293 Sri Lankan courts as of June 30, 2025 — with magistrate’s courts holding 72 percent of the load. Judicial independence has been a recurring political flashpoint this month, after the BASL warned about President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s May Day comments on pending cases and opposition leaders separately wrote to the Chief Justice raising similar concerns.
