• Economic crisis hampers infrastructure development and automation

Although the Justice Ministry has identified that increasing the number of judges and courts is a primary solution to clearing the heavy backlog of cases currently languishing in the country’s courts system, the process to do so is developing at a snail’s pace. 

As per the Justice Ministry’s 2023 Performance Report, seen by The Sunday Morning, at the end of 2023, the largest number of pending cases had been in Magistrates’ Courts – 805,502. District Courts had 259,763 cases to be solved while the Criminal High Courts had 26,542 pending cases. In total, at the end of 2023, there had been a backlog of 1,122,113 cases whereas at the end of 2015, there had been 713,527 pending cases. 

In the years since 2015, the backlog of cases at the end of the year has seen an increase, serving as a grim reminder of the congestion in the courts system. 

Judges per million people

According to a high-ranking Justice Ministry official, a 2021 ministerial committee has recommended that the number of judges and courts be increased to address the backlog of cases, finding that there had only been 15 judges per one million of the population. This ratio had increased to 19 judges per million of the population in 2023. 

“In developed countries, this ratio is about 50 judges per million people,” said the official. 

Yet, as at 31 December 2023, Sri Lanka only had 416 judges in total: 17 in the Supreme Court; 20 in the Court of Appeal; 92 in the Civil Appellate High Courts, Commercial High Courts, Special High Courts, and Criminal High Courts; 259 in the District Courts, District/Magistrates’ Courts, Magistrates’ Courts, Circuit Magistrates’ Courts, and Children’s Magistrates’ Courts; and 33 in the Labour Tribunals. 

As such, in the District Courts, District/Magistrates’ Courts, Magistrates’ Courts, Circuit Magistrates’ Courts, and Children’s Magistrates’ Courts, there had been over 4,000 cases per judge in 2023. 

“Once we started our reforms in 2021, we realised that we also severely lacked officers to perform the other functions in the courts. Therefore, even if we build courthouses and increase the number of judges, there is a shortage of officers; some appointments get seriously delayed by the Department of Management Services (DMS) which doesn’t understand our needs. Seventy-six new officers were hired in the past couple of years,” said the official, adding that the economic crisis and the resulting suspension of Government recruitments had also impacted this process. 

Thus, although the ministry had been attempting to increase the number of courts since 2020, only few changes have happened, including the increase of one Supreme Court house, five Court of Appeal houses, three Commercial High Courts (with one more in the pipeline), and three Small Claims Courts. 

The economic crisis had affected construction work as well and many projects had been temporarily stopped. 

Alternative mechanisms and court automation

Another solution the Justice Ministry is looking at is to strengthen alternative dispute resolution mechanisms: mediation boards and debt conciliation boards. 

A total of 246,726 disputes had been reported to mediation boards in 2023, of which 69% had been settled. 

“Mediation boards are being strengthened – about 200,000 cases per year go to the boards now, which would have otherwise gone to courts. The ministry is primarily focusing on developing infrastructure to support the clearing of backlogs, such as providing technology to record statements online,” another Justice Ministry official told The Sunday Morning. 

Court automation has also been identified as a need of the hour, but its implementation, similar to construction work, has been impacted by the economic crisis. 

Other stakeholders

Meanwhile, the Justice Ministry official also pointed out that other stakeholders, such as the Police, the Attorney General’s Department, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), the Government Analyst’s Department, and the Legal Aid Commission needed to improve their efficiency too. 

Accordingly, Justice Ministry data shows that from the total 71,075 reports requested from the Government Analyst’s Department, just over 53,000 had been reported. It had found it challenging to report on the large number of drugs-related cases. 

Challenges all around

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) Secretary Chathura Galhena said that the BASL admitted the existence of a backlog of cases.

“My view is that this is because our number of judges compared to the population is significantly less than the standard rate. In Sri Lanka, each judge per population has to handle about four times more cases than other developing countries and about 20 times more cases than developed countries,” said Galhena. 

As a result, he recognised that the workload per judge was very high.

He added that each and every court was “inundated with work” and that the lack of facilities, including infrastructure facilities, was an issue. 

“Buildings are there for provisions for a District Court and a Magistrate’s Court but only one court functions in those court complexes due to a lack of staff and facilities.”

He went on to say that although statutes provided for alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, the public was “not used to them”.