Specialised courts

While announcing plans to re-establish the commercial court as an independent entity to address commercial cases more efficiently during a public event last September, Prime Minister Robert Abela declared that the next step towards progress is the specialisation of the judiciary.

Generalist judges are sometimes referred to as novices at everything and experts at nothing. Specialisation of judges can ensure they have the requisite knowledge and experience in their field of jurisdiction. An in-depth knowledge of the legal field in question can improve the quality of the decisions made by a judge. Specialist judges can acquire greater expertise in their specific fields, which can thereby enhance their courts’ authority.

Improving efficiency and expertise in corruption cases is one strong reason for establishing judicial anti-corruption specialisation in our corruption-laden country.

Members of the judiciary. File photo: Times of Malta

Concentrating case files in the hands of a select group of specialist judges can be conducive to consistency in judicial decisions and, consequently, can promote legal certainty.

At the moment, our court system may find it impossible to set up specialised courts or an adequate number of specialised judges. Our judges, one must remark, have always been versatile and always proved themselves to have the ability to address a range of specialist matters. One must, therefore, be wary of having an excessive individual specialisation of judges as this might hamper this necessary versatility.

Should we go for specialised courts, we should still permit a certain degree of versatility in the judges so that there can be flexibility in dealing with all types of cases at the higher level. This flexibility is necessary to ensure that appellate courts fulfil their legal mission to guarantee consistency in the interpretation and application of legislation and of case law. Also, this flexibility would ensure that a specialised area is not dealt with, at an appellate level, by too narrow a group of judges, who might then be in the position to impose their view in a certain field and, thus, prevent developments of the law in that area.

The sustainability of any reforms brought about by the introduction of specialisation in our courts depends on many factors but, primarily, it depends on judicial will or cooperation to adjust to the changes and political will and action to give effect to the changes in full.

MARK SAID – Msida