Justice De Silva passed the Final Examination for the Admission of Attorneys-at-Law with Class I Honours and was awarded the Walter Ladduwahetty Gold Medal for Academic Excellence combined with Extra-Curricular Activities and the Hector Jayawardena Gold Medal for the Address to the Jury (English) Contest.
He holds a Bachelor of Civil Laws (BCL) from University of Oxford, a Master of Laws (LL.M) (International Business Transactions) from University College London where he was a Shell Centenary Scholar. He was a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Michigan State University, USA on a Fulbright award.
Justice De Silva was elected as an Honorary Bencher of The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn of London in October 2021. He was recently appointed as an Honorary Senior Fellow (within Law) of the University of Melbourne.
From 1993 to 2017, he served as a State Counsel, Senior State Counsel, Deputy Solicitor General and Senior Deputy Solicitor General at the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka. During this period, he served as a member of the Sri Lankan team at bilateral negotiations with India, Singapore and China on trade and investment and before the UNHRC. He has appeared in ICSID and LCIA arbitration proceedings.
Justice De Silva served as a Visiting Lecturer in Constitutional Law (Sri Lanka Law College 2007-2017) and Visiting Lecturer in International Trade Law (Faculty of Law, University of Colombo).
He has published widely including a paper on “Free Trade, the WTO and Consumer Protection: The Missing Link” at the Annual Workshop on Global Law and Economic Policy of the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School.
Justice De Silva was appointed as a Judge of the Court of Appeal in July, 2017 and a Judge of the Supreme Court in December 2020. He is presently also a Non-Resident Justice of Appeal of the Court of Appeal of Seychelles.