Silva: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Asanga Welikala
In the context of former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva’s recent interventions into the public debate on the controversial impeachment proceedings now being taken against the current Chief Justice, we reproduce below the Editorial of The Sunday Leader of 7th June 2009, marking the occasion of Silva’s retirement from the Supreme Court Bench. It was written by Asanga Welikala on the invitation of the then Editor of The Sunday Leader, Frederica Jansz.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
Last Friday, 5th June 2009, the Chief Justice Hon. Sarath Nanda Silva P.C. retired from the Supreme Court Bench, just three months short of completing a decade in office (he was appointed by President Kumaratunga on 16th September 1999), in what has been perhaps one of the most, if not the most, controversial tenures of a Chief Justice in the history of the Supreme Court. In almost everything he did on and off the Bench, he divided opinion deeply, combining the tactical adroitness and unprincipled cleverness of the successful advocate, with a ruthless personal ambition and a shrewd sense of political populism: in Dickensian terms, a Jaggers or a Stryver, rather than a Carton. Even in retirement, that Mr. Silva should so sharply divide opinion in Hulftsdorp as to the path he will take, between the dramatic opposites of taking to electoral politics or the life of an ascetic Buddhist mendicant, is the perfect illustration of the contention and controversy that his personality is capable of generating.
A low-country Buddhist who was educated at Trinity College Kandy, the Ceylon Law College, and the University of Brussels, Mr. Silva is a man of not inconsiderable charm and a sharp-witted intelligence, which made him one of the rising stars in the Attorney General’s Department. By the accounts of senior civil servants who sought his official legal advice, he was superlatively competent with a highly developed expertise in the wide field of public law and administration. This is borne out by his record in what was the, unfortunately premature, apogee of his professional life: his tenure as the President of the Court of Appeal. His judgments in this capacity in all branches of the law (but especially in administrative law), while certainly lacking the literary erudition of a de Sampayo, a Dias, a Soertsz, a Gratien, or a Colin-Thomé, are nonetheless luminous examples of crisp concision. Justice Silva’s use of legal first principles, without mechanical or encumbering reliance on excessive precedents, has been compared to H.V. Perera, K.C., which is high praise. Read More
