Sri Lanka's Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal are currently offering judgments, sitting schedules, etc. online at www.supremecourt.lk and www.courtofappeal.lk. Having kicked off data automation late last year with the Supreme Court launching its website as a place for visitors to go to access its judgments, etc, the process continued with the Court of Appeal's website going live recently.
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| Appeal Court President Justice Sathya Hettige checks the website |
The judgments issued by the two courts are currently only available for the period between 2009 (2010 in the case of the Court of Appeal) and 2011, with the most recent Supreme Court judgments (four appeals) being added on June 28, 2011, and the latest Court of Appeal judgments as of May 12, 2011.
Visitors to the above websites can also preview a Daily Court List for both courts which includes daily schedules for sittings for the two benches of the Supreme Court as well as case numbers and status as well as the same (available soon) for all benche of the Court of Appeal. Also included; Supreme Court and Court of Appeal Rules (as amended) as well as the jurisdictions and the articles of the constitution which empowers these courts (132 for the Supreme Court and 146 for the Court of Appeal), the history of the Supreme Court, a brief description of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, and biographies of the Chief Justice (Supreme Court) and the President of the Court (Court of Appeal) as well as the names of all the sitting judges allocated as per their respective court. Additionally, information about the suspension of sittings of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and other courts, as indicated in the latest determination under Rule 62, has been made available.
Launched on October 27, 2010, and, currently, maintained by the Registrar of the Supreme Court, the website of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka also features special determinations pertaining to Presidential Candidate Sarath Fonseka. Further, it has also been suggested that future plans for Supreme Court would include an offering whereby the Supreme Court's Daily Court List would be accessible through SMS.
Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal website, live on June 15, 2011, is maintained by the Registry of the Court of Appeal, with future plans said to entail an electronic case filing and management system which will allow lawyers to file cases via internet. This project is said to be in its pilot stage. Both websites also feature searching capabilities for the added convenience of visitors.
While the ease of access provided by an up-to-date online electronic version of judgments for the two most important of Sri Lanka's courts will. without a doubt, benefit all of the country's citizens, in addition to the greater utility and speed of cases being filed via the Internet as well as bench orders delivered by the court itself at the judges' discretion, a much faster service with speedier issuing of certified copies of judgments, both of the latter applying only to the Court of Appeal; the obvious concern is the limitation inherent in making these important documents available only through the Internet, a medium which is currently only used by 14% of all Sri Lankans, according to Nielsen's most recent Internet Usage Study (46% of these accessing the Internet primarily through their mobile phone).
A better scenario would be additional mediums of access, especially the more widely adopted mobile platform, which has an 80% island-wide saturation, due to there being more than 16 million mobile connections out of a local population of nearly 20 million, according to the above mentioned Nielsen study. |
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