Transformative 19A Experience:The emergence of an equally Parliamentary and Executive President

by Rajan Philips-May 2, 2015

The transformative benefits of the 19th Amendment are arguably more in the experience of its passage – the whole business of its drafting, judicial preview, debate, enactment and adoption, than in the content of its provisions. First, the drafting itself was a very public and effectively contested process, easily without precedent, or parallel, in Sri Lanka’s chequered constitutional history. Second, the judges of the Supreme Court played their part with independence and without interference, breaking, hopefully once and for all, the servile tradition that began with the Second Constitutional Court under the 1972 Constitution and became entrenched in the Supreme Court after the 1978 Constitution.

Transformative 19A Experience the Emergence of an Equally Parliamentary and Executive President by Thavam Ratna