Datasetpublic

navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law

Sri Lanka Case Law Dataset A structured collection of Sri Lankan legal case law extracted from four major law report series. Huggingface Dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law Law Report Series Split Series Description Coverage Cases CLR Ceylon Law Reports One of the oldest law reports in Sri Lanka (dating back to colonial era) 1890 - 1897 291 CLW Ceylon Law Weekly A privately published series of weekly law reports… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law.

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Dataset Card

Sri Lanka Case Law Dataset

A structured collection of Sri Lankan legal case law extracted from four major law report series.

Huggingface Dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law

Law Report Series

Split	Series	Description	Coverage	Cases
`CLR`	Ceylon Law Reports	One of the oldest law reports in Sri Lanka (dating back to colonial era)	1890 - 1897	291
`CLW`	Ceylon Law Weekly	A privately published series of weekly law reports	1936 - 1967	1,887
`NLR`	New Law Reports	Another primary and authoritative law report series	1895 - 1978	1,052
`SLR`	Sri Lanka Law Reports	modern official series of law reports (current era)	1978 - 2021	3,754
`combined`	All combined	All four series merged into one split	1890 - 2021	6,984

Fields

Field	Type	Description
`source`	string	Law report series code (CLR / CLW / NLR / SLR)
`case_no`	string	Case identifier (e.g. "01 CLR 001")
`court_citation`	string	Court appeal number (SLR cases only)
`court`	string	Court name (SLR cases only)
`case_title`	string	Parties involved
`short_summary`	string	One-paragraph summary
`full_summary`	string	Detailed case summary
`decided_date`	string	Date decided (YYYY-MM-DD)
`judges`	string	Presiding judges
`citations`	list	Precedent cases cited
`laws_referred`	list	Statutes and ordinances cited
`arguments`	list	Arguments presented by parties
`judgements`	list	Individual judicial rulings

Example case

json

{
  "case_no": "2021 01 SLR 295",
  "court_citation": "SC APPEAL 57/2019",
  "court": "Supreme Court",
  "case_title": "Algama vs. Lankanayake",
  "short_summary": "The central legal questions examined in this case...",
  "full_summary": "In Algama v. Lankanayake, the Supreme Court addressed...",
  "decided_date": "2021-04-27",
  "judges": "Surasena, J., Amarasekara, J., Samayawardhena, J.",
  "citations": [
    {
      "title": "Babunona v. Cornelis Appu [(1910) 14 NLR 45]",
      "reason_cited": "In discussions regarding...",
      "case_no": "14 NLR 045"
    },
    {
      "title": "Galgamuwa v. Weerasekera [(1919) 21 NLR 108]",
      "reason_cited": "In line with the Babunona v. Cornelis Appu ruling...",
      "case_no": "1 NLR 001"
    }
  ],
  "laws_referred": [
      {
        "law": "Partition Law, No. 21 of 1977",
        "chapter_or_section": "section 48(1)",
        "explanation": "Section 48(1) is cited for the principle..."
      },
      {
        "law": "Trusts Ordinance, No. 9 of 1917",
        "chapter_or_section": "section 83",
        "explanation": "Section 83 serves to establish that..."
      }
  ],
  "arguments": [
      {
        "title": "A constructive trust...",
        "description": "The plaintiff contends that..."
      },
      {
        "title": "The non-existence of a...",
        "description": "The defendant argues that..."
      }
  ],
  "judgements": [
      {
        "title": "The court determined...",
        "description": "According to Samayawardhena J., the transfer..."
      },
      {
        "title": "Surasena J. agrees...",
        "description": "Surasena J. agrees with the logic and..."
      }
  ]
},

Usage

python

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load combined cases
ds = load_dataset("navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law", split="combined")

# Load a specific law report
slr = load_dataset("navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law", split="SLR")

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research or project, please cite it as:

BibTeX

bibtex

@dataset{peiris2026srilankacaselaw,
  author    = {Peiris, Navod},
  title     = {Sri Lanka Case Law Dataset},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url       = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law},
  license   = {CC BY 4.0},
  note      = {Structured case law extracted from CLR (1890--1897),
               CLW (1936--1967), NLR (1895--1978), and SLR (1978--2021)}
}

APA

Peiris, N. (2026). Sri Lanka Case Law Dataset [Data set]. Hugging Face. https://huggingface.co/datasets/navodPeiris/sri-lanka-case-law