Mark Damien Hugh Fernando, PC (27 February 1941 – 20 January 2009) was a jurist and former judge of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.
He believed that in order to provide sound legal advice an attorney must have a working knowledge of other disciplines besides law: for instance, he would point out that a lawyer asked by a client to advise on setting up a company must have some knowledge of finance, accountancy, human resource management, etc., in addition to being familiar with the provisions of the Companies Act.
[11] Towards the end of his career, Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva had excluded him from hearings relating to the constitutionality of bills before the Parliament.
Signatories covered a wide range of the political spectrum, lawyers and law students as well as the ecclesiastical heads of the Buddhist, Catholic, Anglican and Methodist denominations.
The Asian Human Rights Commission, issuing a statement on the resignation of Justice Mark Fernando, warned that a senior judge of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, retiring two and half years earlier before his stipulated date of retirement, indicates a dangerous phenomena beginning to emerge, which is a sure sign of the erosion of independent judiciary and the Rule of Law in the country.