Justice After Covid 19: an Analysis of the Challenges Faced by the Formal Justice Sector in Sri Lanka During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

The formal justice sector in Sri Lanka is almost entirely reliant on physical interactions within the courtroom. Sri Lanka has committed to providing access to justice for all under both domestic and international law. Unfortunately, substantive access to justice for all continues to elude the marginalised. The global pandemic which emerged in January 2020 has thrown a further challenge on this already burdened system. The litigants, lawyers and judges who had relied on an already flawed system are now further physically distanced from the formal justice system. This means that these actors must now seek to ensure that access to justice is restored, albeit without full physical access to courtrooms. This article examines how Covid-19 challenged the dispensation of substantive justice in the formal justice system in order to suggest ways to mitigate these challenges. It discusses the challenges faced by lawyers and litigants during the period 14 March to 15 November 2020. This includes how the physical aspects of dispensation of the day-to-day caseload were resolved, and the strategies that were practised by lawyers, judges and litigants to circumvent these obstacles and challenges. Drawing on postcolonial feminist critique, information gathered through both primary data (gathering of qualitative and quantitative primary data) and secondary data (desk review of laws, regulations and rules), this article attempts to obtain insights into what challenges were experienced by marginalised communities and how these challenges were mitigated by the justice sector. The author applies the strategies used by persons who engaged with courtrooms in the midst of Covid-19 to the theoretical definitions of what justice should look like in an equal society. The article arrives at an understanding of the dispensation of justice during the Covid-19 pandemic.