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Reconciliation: From Invoking to Understanding The International Centre for Ethnic Studies is pleased to announce the launch of Research Paper No: 05  on the theme of Post War Reconciliation titled, A Provisional Evaluation of the Contribution of the Supreme Court to Political Reconciliation in Post-War Sri Lanka (May 2009-August 2012) by Dinesha Samararatne.The imperative for political reconciliation re-emerged in the Sri Lankan public landscape with the end of hostilities in May 2009. In that context, this paper seeks to foreground the mandate and actual contribution of the Sri Lankan judiciary with regard to political reconciliation by considering three questions. One, whether the judiciary in a democratic society can and/or ought to engage with the question of political reconciliation and two, whether the Sri Lankan judiciary has such a mandate within the existing constitutional framework. Through an assessment of some current thinking on the question of political reconciliation in general and particularly through the capabilities approach, it is argued that Sri Lankan judiciary does have a mandate to contribute towards political reconciliation. The third question considered in the paper is whether, the Supreme Court has in fact engaged with the question of political reconciliation. Through an examination of Special Determinations of the Supreme Court and jurisprudence on Fundamental Rights during May 2009 to August 2012, it is argued that while some contribution has been made, by and large the Court has been cautious in its approach, leaving many possibilities unexplored.ICES' Working and Research Paper series on post-war reconciliation examines the contested nature of building peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, taking into account the history of the conflict as well as the current socio-political and economic configurations. In this series we will attempt de-construct the diverse understandings of reconciliation, both dominant and alternative or subaltern – whether as truth, justice and accountability, political reform, or economic reconstruction; the significance of substantive initiatives versus the purely symbolic, myth versus reality or psychological versus material; and the impact of factors such as political will, financial resources, time and moral imagination in reconciliation processesYou can download this paper as a PDF document via the following links:Box: PDF (Non-Facebook users)Scribd: PDF source: International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES)