The government has presented what has been described as a set of revolutionary proposals aimed to improve the administration of justice.

The commission appointed by the government to carry out a holistic review of the justice system tackled the more urgent issues in this first report, and is to produce a second one by the end of July.

Following a second public consultation, a document with the complete proposals will be put forward for the consideration of the government in October. The Commission made around 135 recommendations. 

The parliamentary secretary for justice, Owen Bonnici, said that the justice reform is one of the priorities the government has set itself. And it is clear that a lot of legwork needs to be done to clear out the backlog of extinct laws that just have no place in our modern society. In addition, there are a number of laws – mostly related to modern phenomena such as the internet, intellectual property rights and others, that need to be brought up to date. Some of these were only put into place a few years ago, but they are already obsolete and need to be brought up to speed. There is a whole plethora of legislation that also needs to be updated, such as the rights of people accused of a crime, family law, human rights related laws and others.

The proposals put forward so far, however, mostly deal with the appointment of judges and magistrates, and the way they are promoted and trained, as well as how they are removed.

The criteria on how members of the judiciary are appointed need to be changed, it has been found, to give more preference to lawyers who work in the law courts. It has also been mooted that a judicial appointments commission should be set up to recommend to the government the names of people it deems fit should be appointed judges and magistrates. It was also found that the salaries of magistrates and judges need to be upgraded to reflect their European counterparts.

The commission is also proposing that it should not be Parliament that decides on a dismissal of a judge or magistrate, but this should be the responsibility of a disciplinary commission to be set up. The House should retain the right to ask the commission to investigate.

It also suggests the introduction of the proportionality concept when judges and magistrates are to be disciplined, so as not to exceed in punishments given for minor offences.

Perhaps most importantly, the commission suggested the appointment of judges to speed up the conclusion of cases that have been pending for more than 10 years and of cases that have been left for judgment for more than two years. It also found that judgments should be given within six months of the last court hearing. This all makes for an improvement to the current state of affairs. But the legal system is notoriously sluggish when it comes to reform. Simply stating that changes are to be made will not suffice. The government must really push to see that all that is proposed and put through as law, will be put into effect.