The Archive

The law of Sri Lanka did not begin yesterday.

It accumulated — statute upon statute, judgment upon judgment, gazette upon gazette — from the earliest colonial ordinances through the constitution of an independent nation finding its voice.

Lex brings this inheritance into a single, searchable intelligence. Not a collection of documents, but a structured legal memory: legislation, case law, and scholarly authority, organised to reflect how Sri Lankan law actually works.

I. Sri Lankan Legislation

The Statutes

Primary legislation spanning the breadth of Sri Lankan legal history — from the foundational ordinances of British Ceylon to the Acts of a sovereign Parliament.

The Gazette

Legislative instruments as published in the Government Gazette: regulations, orders, proclamations, and notifications that give statutes their operational force. The law as enacted and the law as implemented.

Amendments and Succession

Legislation does not stand still. Lex tracks the relationships between enactments — what amends what, what supersedes what, what remains in force and what has been quietly overtaken by subsequent law.

II. Sri Lankan Case Law

The Historical Series

The foundational case reports that shaped Sri Lankan jurisprudence:

New Law Reports (NLR) — Approximately 80 volumes spanning 1896 to 1978, covering the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, and High Court. Still cited. Still authoritative.

Ceylon Law Reports — From 1892 onwards, documenting the evolution of our legal system.

The Early Collections — Including the Digest of Supreme Court Decisions from 1843, Wendt's Supreme Court Reports, Browne's Reports, and other historical series that preserve the reasoning of an earlier era.

The Modern Series

The case law of contemporary Sri Lanka:

Sri Lanka Law Reports (SLR) — The primary official series from 1978 to the present day, covering both Supreme Court and Court of Appeal.

Supreme Court Law Reports (SCLR) — Dedicated reporting of Supreme Court decisions from 2009 onwards.

Court of Appeal Law Reports (SCOA) — Dedicated reporting of Court of Appeal decisions from 2011 onwards.

The Breadth of Jurisdiction

Cases across the full range of our superior courts' work:

Supreme Court — Constitutional interpretation, fundamental rights applications, special determinations on bills, appellate matters, Commercial High Court appeals, and the advisory jurisdiction that shapes our constitutional order.

Court of Appeal — Writ applications (certiorari, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto, habeas corpus), civil and criminal appeals, revisionary jurisdiction, and original matters including bail applications.

III. Commonwealth Authorities

Sri Lankan courts do not reason in isolation. When domestic authority is sparse or silent, our judges — and therefore our practitioners — turn to persuasive precedent from jurisdictions whose legal heritage intersects with our own.

Lex includes extensive case law from:

United Kingdom — The colonial inheritance, still persuasive in commercial law, criminal procedure, and statutory interpretation.

India — A fellow inheritor of British legal structures, whose Supreme Court jurisprudence frequently illuminates Sri Lankan constitutional questions.

Australia & New Zealand — Commonwealth jurisdictions that have grappled with similar questions of statutory construction, administrative law, and rights protection.

South Africa — Our sibling in Roman-Dutch heritage. When Sri Lankan courts require guidance on Voet, Grotius, or Van Leeuwen, South African jurisprudence often provides the most directly relevant analysis.

This is not comprehensiveness for its own sake. It is practical necessity — the authorities your courts recognise, included because your practice requires them.

IV. The Scholar's Library

The law is not only statutes and cases. It is also the scholarship that interprets them — the textbooks you studied, the commentaries you consult, the accumulated wisdom of jurists who have devoted their careers to making the law intelligible.

Lex includes principal works from the scholarly tradition:

The Sarkar Series

Sarkar on Evidence
Sarkar on Criminal Procedure
Sarkar on Penal Code

The Collins Series

Collins on Criminal Law
Collins on Evidence

Additional texts and commentaries continue to be incorporated as the archive develops.

V. A Living Archive

The law does not stop. Neither does Lex.

New judgments are incorporated as they are handed down. Legislative amendments are tracked as they come into force. The archive grows not by occasional update, but by continuous attention — because a legal research tool that falls behind the law is worse than no tool at all.

When you search today, you search the law as it stands today.

VI. What This Means for Your Search

When you ask Lex a question, you are not searching a simple database. You are consulting an archive that understands:

That a 1920 Ordinance may have been amended by a 1956 Act, further modified by a 1985 statute, and must now be read subject to the 1978 Constitution.

That the New Law Reports and the Sri Lanka Law Reports represent different eras of the same legal tradition.

That a South African judgment on Roman-Dutch principles may be more directly useful than an English one — because both Sri Lanka and South Africa inherit the same legal foundations.

That the scholarly commentary in Sarkar on Evidence has shaped how generations of Sri Lankan lawyers understand the law of proof.

This is the archive that stands behind every search.

The depth is ours. The thinking remains yours.