The Irish cricket team was on hand during the 2012 Cricket World Cup in Sri Lanka to help Dublin based Blackhall Publishing launch the first edition of Blackhall’s Laws of Sri Lanka. On 1 September 2019 Blackhall published the third edition of work, which has become an indispensable addition to the private and public practitioner in Sri Lanka.

The set of eight volumes, amounting to approximately 10,000 pages, contain all the Acts (as amended) on which the legal framework of the island rests.

The last official statute book was released in 1956 and was updated by an official publication in 1980, says K.M Basheer Ahamed, an Advocate and Attorney-at-Law who served as a local consultant on the project. However, those interested in keeping track of amendments made in the years that followed used to have to put in the leg work themselves. “Here every detail is consolidated into the Act itself so you do not have the laborious task of having to search through the 1980 edition and go year by year up to 2019,” said Mr. Ahamed. “We have consolidated and annotated each Act up to July 31, 2019,” added Dheeraj Bothra, a Managing Editor for Blackhall based in India. “This is a product that every country should have for its law practice,” he said.

Sri Lanka’s judicial framework represents a complex melange of laws drawn from Roman Dutch Law, England, Holland, South India and Old Ceylon – one that is sometimes difficult for outsiders to navigate. “One of the important aspects of this is that there is a lot of investor interest in Sri Lanka,” said Ciaran MacGlinchey, Publishing Director at Blackhall, anticipating that a large percentage of sales will be made in foreign markets.

In Sri Lanka Blackhall has committed to working exclusively with Stamford Lake to distribute the new edition. Currently, clients also have the option of accessing the online edition of the publication, which is kept up to date as legislation is promulgated.

Photo: Mr Basheer Ahamed presents a set of the Revised Laws of Sri Lanka to Irish Ambassador to Sri Lanka Mr Feilim McLaughlin on publication of the first edition of the work in 2012.