From 29-31 August 2025, the Foundation and its partners hosted a Judicial Dialogue in Dambulla.
This event was organised as part of the Foundation’s current project in Sri Lanka, titled ‘Consolidating the Rule of Law in Sri Lanka: Strengthening the Resilience of Democratic Institutions to Promote Stability in the Face of Crises’, in collaboration with the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales and the Sri Lanka Judges’ Institute. The second Judicial Dialogue facilitated interaction between judges of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka, judges from comparative jurisdictions, and local and foreign academics.
This was the second event of this nature, following the inaugural Judicial Dialogue held in April 2023. A unique feature of this event was the attendance in person of Lady Brenda Hale, the Rt Hon. the Baroness Hale of Richmond, former President of the Supreme Court of the UK, who delivered the keynote address on the opening day of the dialogue. The keynote was followed by a period of Q&A in which she responded to questions posed by the judges. Lady Hale also participated in other sessions at the event, and engaged with the judges on the sidelines of the dialogue.
During the dialogue, which took a hybrid format, participants discussed a variety of topics including judicial independence and diversity, the court’s jurisdiction in pre-enactment review of bills, the court’s consultative jurisdiction, constitutional values, remedies in human rights adjudication, and Roman-Dutch law. Participants in the dialogue, besides the Honourable Sri Lankan judges and Lady Hale, included eminent scholars from prestigious institutions based in Sri Lanka, Canada, India, USA, UK, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and South Africa. The dialogue provided an opportunity for participants to share ideas and experiences across legal disciplines and jurisdictions. Beyond this, certain sessions in the dialogue were structured to create a forum for the Sri Lankan judges to reflect privately on the relevance, or otherwise, of the topics discussed to their daily work.
It is anticipated that this initial engagement between the Foundation, its partners, and Sri Lanka’s apex courts will be built upon in future events which seek to promote advanced reflection and debate on conceptual aspects of judicial review and other themes relevant to democracy and the rule of law.
The project is generously funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.