Joseph Francis Anthony Soza (1919 – 8 April 2013[1]) was a former judge of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.
As the founding director of the Sri Lanka Judges' Institute, he played a major role in the training of judicial officers in the country.
Although its legal foundations were weak, the HRTF performed an important function due mainly to its dynamic chair, a former Supreme Court judge, who used his stature as a former judicial officer to gain access to detention centers and to engage with military commanders on a regular basis.
[9] As a high-court judge of Colombo and chairman of the trial-at-bar of TULF Leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, on 10 September 1976, Soza created "an explosion of jubilation" by holding invalid the emergency regulations under which the case was filed.
He wrote the landmark opinion in the Vivienne Goonewardena assault case, in which it was declared that the police infringed the petitioner's freedom of expression.