The Sri Lanka Bar Association crisis exposes tensions over judicial power, elite authority, legal symbolism and proposed retirement-age reforms.
The Sri Lanka Bar Association crisis reflects a deeper collapse in the symbols that once protected the legal profession’s prestige, power and social authority.
After Sri Lanka came under British rule, the legal profession occupied one of the highest positions within the state structure.
The medical profession later gained similar respect. However, the growth of science education created several new professional fields. As a result, the traditional hierarchy of professional prestige gradually changed.
During British rule and for a considerable period after independence, the legal profession remained closely connected to elite dominance and political power.
Lawyers did not gain respect solely through their technical legal knowledge. They also had access to the colonial state’s language, system of governance and legal authority.
Therefore, the title “lawyer” became a powerful symbol of social status, political influence and elite recognition.
Free education eventually opened the profession to people from less privileged social backgrounds.
This development did not entirely destroy the old elite structure. Instead, it extended some of its symbolic privileges to new groups. In that sense, it represented a form of democratisation.
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Sirimal and the Social Power of Becoming a Lawyer
Martin Wickramasinghe’s novel Karuwala Gedara illustrates this transformation through Sirimal, a lawyer.
However, Sirimal did not achieve that status through free education. His father, Thinan, had enough money to send him to a school in Galle.
The novel centres on the class and cultural conflict between Thinan, the traditional rural father, and his Westernised, urbanised son.
Sirimal’s rise into the legal profession brings economic and social advancement.
However, that advancement requires him to distance himself from his village, his family and his former way of life.
From a Lacanian perspective, this is more than a cultural conflict between a rural father and a Westernised son.
It concerns a person who shapes his life around the “desire of the Other.”
Sirimal does not become a lawyer only because of a direct personal ambition. He also wants society to recognise and value him.
In other words, he wants a name accepted by what Lacanian theory calls the “Big Other.”
The novel depicts Sirimal’s ambitions, the subjective price he pays and the social recognition he receives.
Even after nearly 30 years, he cannot visit his parents in Koggala Malala.
However, Wickramasinghe does not fully explain how becoming a lawyer could turn Sirimal into such a cynical figure. Nor does he clearly show how reason and logical thinking could contribute to that condition.
The title “lawyer” gives Sirimal respect, but it also divides him.
He succeeds socially, yet loses something personally.
To gain the symbolic identity attached to the legal profession, he must separate himself from his earlier world.
The professional title does not fill his internal “lack.” Instead, it reorganises his desires around that identity.
Therefore, even after gaining status, Sirimal remains incomplete.
How Legal Prestige Became a Symbolic Institution
Modern lawyers do not organise their ambitions in exactly the same way as Sirimal.
However, many people from families far poorer than his have entered the profession and risen socially.
The legal profession did not earn respect because every individual lawyer was considered honourable.
It earned respect because society believed the law was relatively impartial and stood above personal desire.
A lawyer therefore drew authority not only from personal character, but also from the symbolic institution that the lawyer represented.
In legal terms, the Lacanian proposition that the “Big Other does not exist” means there is no infallible authority guaranteeing the consistency of the legal system.
The law operates, but it cannot supply its own final foundation.
Current political change has exposed this reality more clearly.
Political crises, corruption allegations, fraud revelations and institutional conflicts have made the system’s “lack” more visible to society.
The rise of the JVP to government power contributed to that exposure.
From a leftist perspective, the task should not simply be to capture democracy. It should be to create a public discourse around these contradictions.
Only through such discourse can a deeper political reorientation occur.
Law, Political Power and the Malimawa Government
The relationship between law enforcement, the judiciary, political authority and business power has again moved to the centre of public debate.
During the good governance administration, Sri Lanka saw cases filed against elite politicians connected to a ruling establishment.
However, the argument presented here is that authorities did not necessarily file those cases to punish powerful figures.
Instead, the cases served to satisfy election promises and bring those politicians under political control.
Between 2015 and 2025, many such cases ended in acquittals rather than punishments.
After the Malimawa government entered office, several remaining cases from that period began producing punishments for politicians and business figures.
That development has revealed the links between law enforcement institutions, the courts, political power and influential business interests.
Consequently, many members of the public no longer view the Bar Association simply as a body of “defenders of justice.”
At a recent media briefing on Cabinet decisions, a journalist working for Reno Silva reportedly asked the Cabinet Spokesperson a question assigned by Silva.
The question was broadly framed as follows: “If possible, do this constitutional amendment regarding judges after December.”
The implication was that the amendment itself would not present a problem if authorities introduced it after the current Chief Justice retired.
This also reflects the central problem confronting the Bar Association.
Sri Lanka Bar Association Crisis Deepens Over Discipline
The Judicial Service Commission, chaired by Chief Justice Surasena, has removed, suspended or compulsorily retired 20 judicial officers over allegations of indiscipline and corruption.
Those affected reportedly include a High Court judge, District Judges, Magistrates and other senior judicial officials.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has recently removed several lawyers from professional practice after findings of misconduct and fraudulent activity.
Sri Lanka has not previously witnessed disciplinary action against so many legal and judicial officials within such a short period.
The courts and the legal profession have long maintained the symbolic authority of “justice” and the “supremacy of sacred law.”
When judges and lawyers lose their professional standing in rapid succession, that symbolic illusion begins to collapse.
This, the argument suggests, explains the anxiety affecting both the Bar Association and sections of the democratic intelligentsia.
They find the exposure difficult to tolerate.
Another source of turmoil involves a person who reportedly came from a poor, low-caste family, advanced through free education, entered the elite and later became Justice Minister.
Serious allegations against that person have intensified conflict within the Bar Association.
Why Courtrooms Resemble Sacred Spaces
Courtrooms often resemble Catholic churches in their design.
They feature high ceilings, large pillars, carvings and an elevated, specially designed seat for the judge.
Judicial robes are also distinctive and resemble elements of Catholic priestly clothing.
Courts prescribe formal codes of conduct.
Lawyers must wear ties, coats and other highly formal attire.
These architectural, visual and ceremonial features help intimidate ordinary people.
The “Big Other,” whether understood as law, culture or the state, is not a physically existing person or object.
It is a conceptual structure.
High ceilings, pillars and elevated judicial seats communicate that the law stands above ordinary citizens. They present it as sacred, permanent and beyond change.
When an ordinary person enters such a building, that person immediately understands their subordinate position within the institution.
Like a Catholic priest, a judge wears special robes.
In ordinary clothing, the judge remains a fallible human being rather than a sacred figure.
Once the robes appear, however, they conceal individual subjectivity.
The judge then becomes a symbol of what Lacanian theory calls the “law of the Father.”
Society no longer views the judge merely as a man or woman. The judge becomes the symbolic voice of the law.
Lawyers follow similarly strict dress codes.
Their coats and ties suggest that they have placed personal desires aside and submitted themselves entirely to legal authority.
The resemblance between cathedral architecture and court buildings is therefore not accidental.
The Sacred Language Adopted by the Secular State
During the feudal period, religious institutions governed society through the “law of God.”
The modern secular state later appropriated that power.
The judiciary adopted the same symbolic language used by the church, including massive pillars, high ceilings, ceremonial clothing and formal rituals.
In another administrative form, the secular state absorbed the sacred authority previously held by religious institutions.
Claims that a democratic state exists entirely independently from religion ignore this historical relationship between law and religious power.
Modern society may have replaced God with the “rule of law,” but it has not fully removed God from the system’s symbolic structure.
The legal order still relies on sacred imagery, ritual and the belief in an authority above ordinary human beings.
Yet recent disciplinary actions and institutional disputes have weakened that illusion.
They show that judges and lawyers remain individuals whose conduct, interests and decisions can shape legal outcomes.
Retirement-Age Debate and the Future Chief Justice
The Bar Association has not demonstrated that Chief Justice Surasena committed wrongdoing.
Nor has it openly objected to his current service.
The real concern, according to this argument, is the prospect that Surasena could remain in office for another two years.
The Bar Association claims that the proposed extension of judges’ retirement ages threatens judicial independence.
However, the author argues that this claim lacks a proper foundation.
Beneath it lies resistance to Surasena remaining Chief Justice for a longer period.
From the government’s perspective, the issue also concerns whether Kodagoda could succeed him.
That dispute supports the earlier argument that the individual holding an office remains decisive, despite robes, ceremony, elevated seating and institutional symbolism.
The government publicly says the amendment would extend judicial retirement ages and help expedite court proceedings.
However, like the Bar Association and democratic critics, it does not disclose what the author presents as the real political calculation.
That calculation concerns Kodagoda’s potential influence over judgments in cases involving elite figures.
The current Attorney General is presented as another example.
A case filed against Namal in 2015 has still reportedly not received the Attorney General’s advice.
However, removing the Attorney General could itself produce allegations of political interference and attacks on democracy.
The government had also stated during Wengappuli’s tenure as Chief Justice that Kodagoda would not receive the position.
Legal Institutions Can Never Be Perfect
These events reveal that the person who occupies a powerful office matters, regardless of clothing, ceremony, architecture or institutional ornamentation.
They also expose the imperfections of democracy, judicial independence and the rule of law.
None of these systems can ever become completely consistent or perfect.
The argument is that society should confront this imperfection rather than hide it behind sacred institutional imagery.
The Bar Association now faces declining symbolic identity, influence, dominance and earning capacity.
As the existing elite structure weakens, its leaders can see that their own institutional authority may also diminish or disappear.
This helps explain why even lawyers connected to the Malimawa government may not support the JVP’s actions.
Nevertheless, the Bar Association still has one argument it can use to justify its position.
It can say: “Our concern is not the individual, but the government’s intervention in extending judges’ retirement ages.”
Yet even by conventional democratic standards, that argument may not carry decisive weight.
The government states that it wants to extend retirement ages to speed up court proceedings. It also openly describes the proposal as a political decision.
The Sri Lanka Bar Association crisis therefore extends beyond one retirement-age amendment or one possible judicial successor.
It concerns the weakening of a legal order that depended on symbolism, ritual and elite authority.
As those symbols lose their power, the individuals, interests and political struggles behind the institution become increasingly visible.
