Dappula de Livera is a

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

n lawyer and the former

Attorney General of Sri Lanka The attorney general of Sri Lanka is the Sri Lankan government's chief legal adviser, and its primary lawyer in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. The attorney general is usually a highly respected senior advocate, and is appointed by the ruling go ...

. He previously served as the

Solicitor General of Sri Lanka The solicitor general of Sri Lanka is a post subordinate to the Attorney General of Sri Lanka, attorney general of Sri Lanka. The solicitor general of Sri Lanka assists the attorney general, and is assisted by four additional solicitors general. ...

from February 2018 and took over as acting attorney general from 29April 2019 until his formal appointment in May 2019.

Career

Educated at St. Joseph's College and

St. Anthony's College, Kandy St. Anthony's College, Kandy (, ) is a Catholic School, Roman Catholic School in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The college was established in 1844 by the Franciscan missionary, Felice Zoppi. The college is under the management of the Sylvestr ...

, he studied law at

Sri Lanka Law College Sri Lanka Law College (abbreviated as SLLC), formerly known as Ceylon Law College, is a law college, and the only legal institution where one can enrol as an Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka. It was established in 1874, under the then Council of Le ...

, taking oaths as an

Attorney-at-Law Attorney at law or attorney-at-law, usually abbreviated in everyday speech to attorney, is the preferred term for a practising lawyer in certain jurisdictions, including South Africa (for certain lawyers), Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and the Unit ...

of the

Supreme Court of Sri Lanka The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka (; ) is the Supreme court, highest court in Sri Lanka and the final judicial instance of record. Established in 1801 and empowered to exercise its powers subject to the provisions of the Constitution of Sri Lanka ...

in 1984. He joined the Attorney General's Department in 1985 as a State Counsel. He went on to hold the posts of Senior State Counsel, Deputy Solicitor General, Additional Solicitor General, Senior Additional Solicitor General. He had functioned as a Senior Prosecutor and Appellate Counsel for the Republic, Head of the Criminal Division of Attorney General's Department. He had also on secondment served as a State Counsel for the Attorney General's Department of the Republic of Seychelles. In 2002, he gained an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

from the

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

and holds a Diploma in International Relations from the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies. He was appointed as a

President's Counsel A president's counsel ( postnominal PC) is an eminent lawyer who is appointed by the President of Sri Lanka as an individual "learned in the law". The term is an honorific that replaced the Queen's Counsel (QC), which Sri Lanka ceased appointing ...

in 2014. During his tenure at the Attorney General's Department he had served as a member of the National Commission against the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons; and the Task Force established by the Ministry of Justice to deal with human smuggling and illegal migration; legal consultant and member of the advisory board of the Financial Intelligence Unit of the

Central Bank of Sri Lanka The Central Bank of Sri Lanka ( CBSL; ), known until 1985 as the Central Bank of Ceylon, is the central bank of Sri Lanka. It was established in 1950 under the Monetary Law Act No.58 of 1949 (MLA) and in terms of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Ac ...

. He had worked as the senior legal counsel to the special presidential commission appointed to inquire into issues relating to the maintenance of law and order and was the chief prosecutor commission of inquiry on bond issuance. On 18February 2018, he was appointed Solicitor General and served till 29 April before Dilrukshi Dias Wickramasinghe took over from him. After holding the Solicitor General position, he was appointed as the acting Attorney General after

Jayantha Jayasuriya Jayantha Chandrasiri Jayasuriya, President's Counsel, PC () is a lawyer who served as the 47th Chief Justice of Sri Lanka from April 2019 to October 2024. Jayasuriya was approved by the Constitutional Council (Sri Lanka), Constitutional Council ...

was appointed as

Chief Justice of Sri Lanka The chief justice of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is the head of the judiciary of Sri Lanka and the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Established in 1801, the chief justice is one of ten Supreme Court justices; the other nine are ...

. His appointment was confirmed on 7May by the Constitutional Council and was sworn in on 10May 2019. He retired from the position of Attorney General in May 2021 and was replaced by Sanjay Rajaratnam in the relevant position. He is married to activist Marini De Livera.

References

{{Authority control W Year of birth missing (living people) President's Counsels (Sri Lanka) 20th-century Sri Lankan lawyers Sinhalese people Living people 21st-century Sri Lankan lawyers Alumni of the UCL Faculty of Laws