What Rohan Edirisinghe Forgot: The Missing Pieces in the Judicial Retirement Age Debate
The question isn't whether judges should retire later—it's whether a government should change the rules mid-game
On July 27, 2026, the Sri Lankan Cabinet approved a proposal to raise the retirement age of judges across all levels by two years. Supreme Court judges would now serve until 67 instead of 65. Within days, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) passed a unanimous resolution against the move, the Judicial Service Association followed suit, and international bodies like the Commonwealth Lawyers' Association and the International Association of Judges weighed in with concern.
The debate has been framed in legal terms: constitutional procedure, judicial independence, security of tenure. Rohan Edirisinghe's argument that there is "No Mandate" for such an extension has resonated with many. But in focusing on the narrow question of mandate, the critics may have missed something equally important: a government elected on an anti-corruption platform is now discovering that pursuing accountability against powerful interests requires institutional stability that it is simultaneously undermining.
The Uncomfortable Context Critics Forgot
The debate over judicial retirement ages does not happen in a vacuum. Sri Lanka's justice system is in visible distress. Over 1.13 million cases remain pending across 293 courts nationwide, with magistrates' courts alone holding more than 818,000 active cases. The country has roughly one magistrate's court for every 315,000 people. Justice delayed on this scale is not an administrative inconvenience—it is a daily denial of justice to over a million families.
The prisons tell an even starker story. Facilities designed for approximately 10,500 inmates now hold over 41,000—roughly four times capacity. The majority are remand prisoners, many detained in the wave of drug-related arrests. Thousands languish because of delays in Government Analyst reports. The Justice Minister himself acknowledged that people can wait a year and a half in remand merely to learn whether the substance found on them was a narcotic at all.
What critics have "forgotten" is that the amendment is not a standalone power grab but one part of a broader reform package. The government points to parallel efforts: expanding court administrative staff, reorganizing the Attorney General's Department, and clearing chronic processing delays at the Government Analyst's Department.
The Process Problem: What Critics Also Missed
The BASL formally requested a meeting with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, urging that no further steps be taken on the proposal until it had an opportunity to present its views. The Association stressed that "constitutional amendments affecting the Superior Judiciary should never be introduced in an ad hoc manner or in response to temporary circumstances" and that reforms "should only be undertaken where there is a clearly demonstrable institutional necessity, transparent public justification and broad stakeholder consultation".
Despite this, the Cabinet proceeded to consider and approve the proposal without first giving the BASL an opportunity to present its concerns.
This is where the critics' focus on "mandate" misses a crucial distinction. The government appears to have both a mandate (it won a supermajority) and a legal basis (it can amend the constitution). What it lacks is something far more important in a democracy: consent built through process. As journalist Dilrukshi Handunnetti noted, "the administration's motive is under the public microscope more than it seems to understand, creating a dent in public trust".
The Protection Argument Critics Overlook
Proponents of the amendment point to an important safeguard: the Chief Justice cannot remain in office for more than six years. This is not a measure designed for a single individual—it applies across the entire judiciary, from the highest courts to the lower courts.
What critics have "forgotten" is the global context. France increased its judicial retirement age to 67, and the Chief Justice serves until 68. South Africa introduced a retirement age of 70 together with a maximum judicial tenure of 12 years. The United Kingdom requires judges to retire at 70. As attorney-at-law Akalanka Ukwatta observed, "These examples demonstrate that Sri Lanka has already fallen behind the international trend".
The argument that raising the retirement age threatens judicial independence is also more complex than critics admit. Security of tenure—the principle that judges cannot be arbitrarily removed—is constitutionally protected in Sri Lanka. Article 107(5) establishes that judges hold office "during good behaviour" and cannot have their retirement age reduced during their term. The amendment does not touch this principle. It changes the age at which judges retire, not the conditions under which they can be removed.
What the Critics' Silence Reveals
The most striking omission in the critics' case is the silence on alternatives. If a two-year extension is not the solution to the case backlog, what is? If experienced senior judges should not be retained, how does the system compensate for their loss? If constitutional amendment is the wrong process, what is the right one?
What Rohan Edirisinghe and his allies forgot is that opposing a proposal is not the same as offering a solution. The justice system is failing the people it exists to serve. As Lionel Bopage wrote in the Sunday Observer, "The retirement age of judges is not a free-standing technical question about Article 107(5). It sits inside a justice system in visible distress, inside a political moment in which a Government elected on an anti-corruption mandate is attempting to enforce the rule of law against powerful interests, and inside a society whose trust in its institutions has been battered by decades of impunity".
The People the Critics Forgot
Perhaps the most important forgotten element is this: the debate belongs to the people. As Bopage argued, "The debate has been captured almost entirely by lawyers, judges and constitutional experts. That is precisely the problem".
In a democracy, the ultimate guardians of the rule of law are not the courts. They are the people. Any political resolution of this issue must rest on the organized strength and informed consent of the masses—not on legislation rammed through Parliament, not on the coercive instruments of the state, and not on the arrogance of authority, whether governmental or professional.
What the legal profession has "forgotten" is that the ordinary citizen—the litigant waiting a decade for a land case, the mother whose son has sat on remand for two years, the worker who has watched the powerful walk free while the powerless are punished—does not care about doctrinal purity. They care about whether the system delivers justice. By focusing entirely on the procedural question of mandate, the critics have allowed the government's political opponents to frame this debate entirely in terms of procedure, not outcomes.
The Bottom Line
Rohan Edirisinghe is right that the amendment process has been mishandled. He is right that constitutional changes require broad consultation. But he and his allies have "forgotten" that governance is not a legal exercise—it is a political one, accountable to people who are demanding change.
The challenge for Sri Lanka is not whether to extend judicial retirement ages. It is whether a government can pursue accountability against powerful interests while simultaneously preserving institutional independence through proper process. The proposed amendment represents a shortcut in a system that desperately needs reform, but the critics' absolute opposition offers no path forward—only a return to the same stalled, dysfunctional justice system that has failed millions of Sri Lankans for decades.
If this amendment is pushed through by two-thirds majority alone, over the unanimous objection of the Bar, the judges' own associations, and the opposition, the government will have won a legislative battle while losing the deeper war for public trust. But if the critics continue to focus only on process while ignoring the system's catastrophic failure, they too will be remembered as having missed the point entirely.
The justice system belongs neither to the judges nor to the politicians. It belongs to the people of Sri Lanka, and only their organized confidence can secure it. That is the piece everyone seems to have forgotten.