The Faculty of Law was established 60 years ago to enhance the legal education in Sri Lanka as such education was to provide the qualified persons to run the institutions in the country within the framework of the rule of law. There was agreement then that the constitutional and the legal framework of the country was the rule of law operating within the liberal democratic framework of governance.
However, during those 60 years, instead of improvement being made to the foundation of the rule of law and constitutionalism, things have gone in the opposite direction. There is common consensus in every sector of society and in every part of the country that lawlessness is the most visible factor in Sri Lankan life.
The objection that something is illegal often does not seem to matter very much. It is illegal to burn the houses of political opponents during elections, but elections without severe violence do not take place in Sri Lanka anymore. The election commissioner will not declare an election illegal on the basis that it was violent, nor does anybody care to go to court to get an election annulled despite of the severe suffering they might have experienced.
It is of course illegal to kill and murder is a paramount crime in the Penal Code. However, killing has become common and easy throughout the country. Most cases of murder, particularly those which bear any sensitivity, do not get investigated at all. It is no longer a scandal if murders, even amounting to large numbers of people being killed, are not investigated.
It is illegal to take bribes and be corrupt. However, in every area of life there is widespread corruption. The blatantly open nature of the corruption and the extravagant ways of living, resulting from corruption does not make anyone feel shy. Not to be corrupt is not an ideal that is admired but, in fact, it is scorned as weakness.
It is illegal to torture someone but it is not possible to find a single police station in the country where torture is not used routinely. The killing of arrested persons is a normal affair and at the inquest level itself perpetrators are held not to be liable on the basis of excuses such as self defense killings which everyone knows is a bogus excuse for well planned extrajudicial killings. Like torture, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and the like are no longer treated as horrendous crimes but as ordinary occurrences that escape any legal reprisal.
The above is just weak expression of the absence of the respect for law throughout the country. In the north and the east the issue of law has ceased to have any meaning for many decades now. The terrorists, the government and political associations associated with the government, all live by the rule of the gun. Who will ever wonder whether there are legal rights for the people who live in these areas?
When the 60 years of legal education at university level will be reviewed on this commemoration of the founding of the Faculty of Law will the law be remembered in any other way than some sort of a nostalgia for something that has passed away? If that is so then how will the present generation of law students, and others who are to follow, find much of a meaning in the celebration.
If the 60th anniversary celebration is to have any meaning it should provide an occasion for a critical review of the lawlessness that prevails in the country and the ways to find solutions to the problem of the very survival of the country as one that is based on the rule of law. No honest commemoration can take place without this review. Perhaps yet another question to ask is as to why during the last 60 years the Faculty of Law failed to produce the type of intellectuals within the legal profession who would have been able to give leadership for the maintenance of the rule of law and for the protection of the legitimacy of the basic institutions of the country which are the foundations of law as well as democracy. Unfortunately among the facultys products there are more cynics who laugh at the law and adjust without difficulty to every form of corruption than those who would stand against it.
Will the 60th anniversary provide an occasion for an honest and bold review that would legitimise the role of the Faculty of Law?
