Dinesha Samararatne
University of Melbourne
Collaborating Network
Affiliations
Senior Fellow, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Australia
Senior, Lecturer, Department of Public & International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Biography
Dinesha Samararatne is a Professor at the Department of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her research interests include judicial review, public participation in constitution-making, constitutional resilience, women and constitutional law, fourth branch institutions and the relevance of the global south in comparative constitutional law. Dinesha has published widely. Dinesha is a Senior Fellow and Co-Convenor of Constitution Transformation Network (CTN) of the Melbourne Law School, Australia. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Indian Law Review. In 2023 she was appointed as an independent expert to the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka. Dinesha is a LLB graduate from the University of Colombo and an Attorney-at-Law. She read for her Master’s degree as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Law School, MA, USA and she completed her doctoral studies at the University of Colombo. Dinesha has previously been affiliated with the Centre on Comparative Constitutional Law as a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow (April – May 2018) and as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2019 - 2020).
Research Focus
- How can principles of constitutionalism (broadly understood) be applied in a) post-war contexts in which constitutional reform is intrinsically connected with peace-building and b) in the context of nationalist backlash to constitutionalism? In examining these questions, I am also reflecting developing critical perspectives on comparative constitutional law as a field of inquiry, and seeking to foreground problems more common in the ‘global south’ jurisdictions and beyond ‘the canon’ of scholarship centred in the ‘global north.’
- In what ways can the legal profession and the judiciary be made more responsive to the advancement of women’s right to equality? I examine this question by asking ‘the woman question,’ the orientation to understanding of a given issue from a ‘woman’s point of view,’ in the context of the legal profession and of the judiciary in Sri Lanka.
GFI Writings
Dinesha Samararatne
University of Melbourne
How Flourishing Is Relevant in the Realities of Sri Lanka
This is a provocative brief and I thank the authors for it. In particular, I appreciate the recognition of the dimension of the emotional plane. I note my reactions briefly below. In teaching public law subjects to undergraduates (law is an undergraduate degree in Sri Lanka) I regularly refer to the…
Dinesha Samararatne
University of Melbourne
It's Easier to Agree on Injustice Than Justice
I found the Brief to be convincing. It affirms my view that we are confronted with justice issues in the micro and the macro events of our lives and our work. However, I find that justice understood as ‘rights’ can sometimes be too abstract. Disagreements as to what ‘rights’ or what ‘justice’ ought …
Dinesha Samararatne
University of Melbourne
Justice in Academic Publishing and the Academic Calling: A Perspective from the Global South
Wolterstoff’s Brief on ‘Justice and Rights’ clarifies the central role of justice in the academy (writ large). I find his distinction between first and second order justice to be useful in organizing my own thinking on the matter. The Brief has provoked me to reflect on two aspects of academia which…