By The Pulseline News Desk
Despite mounting opposition from legal bodies at home and overseas, the government is pressing ahead with plans to extend the retirement age of its most senior judges — a move it says is about experience, but critics note that it is about something else entirely.
According to a media reports, the government is actively considering raising the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 65 to 67, and that of Court of Appeal judges from 63 to 65. The proposal would give eligible judges an additional two years on the bench at the country’s highest judicial levels.
The government’s case
The rationale, as explained by a senior government spokesperson, is straightforward on the surface. Experienced judges who have spent careers working their way up through the system often find themselves eligible for promotion to the higher courts just as they are approaching — or have already reached — retirement age. By the time the opportunity arrives, the window has closed.
“With the proposed amendments, they would have the opportunity to serve in a higher court for at least two to three years,” the spokesperson has said, adding that the experience such judges bring would be of enormous benefit to the system as a whole.
The government has also framed the move as part of a broader bottom-up strategy to address vacancies across the judiciary. Under that plan, 50 new magistrates would first be appointed to fill gaps in the lower courts, with attention then turning to the four vacancies currently open in both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.
The critics’ case
The legal establishment, however, is not convinced — and the opposition is not staying quiet.
The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, and the Law Association for Asia and the Pacific have all urged the government to back away from the retirement age extension. Their concern is not procedural. It goes to the heart of judicial independence.
The opposition and international legal organisations have already been raising alarms about what they describe as government attempts to exert influence over the judiciary. Against that backdrop, a proposal that gives the executive a hand in determining how long sitting judges remain in their posts is being read by many in the legal community as something more than an administrative fix.
Extending a judge’s tenure — particularly at the Supreme Court level — is not a neutral act. It can shape the composition of the bench, influence the timing of key rulings, and create dependencies, whether intended or not, between the judiciary and the political authority that enables the extension.
What happens next
The government has not finalised the proposal, and the process of appointing 50 new magistrates appears to be the more immediate priority. But the retirement age question is not going away, and the pressure from legal bodies both locally and internationally suggests that any move to push it through will face significant resistance.
For a government that has repeatedly stated its commitment to institutional reform and rule of law, how it handles this particular proposal will be watched closely — not just by lawyers and judges, but by anyone with a stake in whether Sri Lanka’s courts remain genuinely independent.
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