The justice system, which is sinking under the heavy workload, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, got a lifeline this week when Parliament approved the extension of the retirement age of members of the judiciary from 65 to 68.
This means that three senior judges who were meant to retire in the next few months can continue striking off their never-ending list of pending cases.
Judges Tonio Mallia, Joseph R Micallef and Joseph Zammit McKeon were all meant to retire over the next few months but will now continue to preside over cases and help solve the backlog that exists.
The Association of Judges and Magistrates of Malta recently called on the authorities to appoint new members to the bench “with urgency” because of the extent of the current workload. It said that it is not possible for the judiciary in its current size to cope with existing work in an efficient and effective manner.
Malta currently has a chief justice, 24 judges and 22 magistrates, with the last appointment of judiciary members dating back to April 2019, when three judges and three magistrates were appointed. Those appointments are being contested by NGO Repubblika before the European Court of Justice.
A 2018 Council of Europe analysis of European judicial systems found that Malta's number of judges per 100,000 people was roughly half that of the European average.
The retirement of three other senior members of the judiciary would have compounded the problem, with legal experts saying that if someone is still capable of serving in the role, he or she should be allowed to do so. There is also the argument about the deficit of experience that every retirement brings about.
The idea of increasing the retirement age of the judiciary was first floated by former Nationalist MP Franco Debono who in November 2011 had presented a motion in Parliament proposing a number of changes to the judicial system.
A lawyer by profession, Debono saw what changes were needed in the judicial system and presented them in the form of a motion. A good number of these proposals have since been implemented over the years while many others were included in the Giovanni Bonello report and more recently by the Venice Commission.
The first major development the motion had led to was the historic split between the Justice and Home Affairs ministerial portfolios, without which the rest of the reforms could never be implemented.
So many years later, the House of Representatives finally unanimously approved a constitutional amendment tabled by Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis to extend the retirement age for judges and magistrates.
He explained that the reasoning behind the amendment is not to lose experience and specialisation, particularly in the Constitutional Court, as well as in the Court of Superior Appeal, where there is a large number of pending cases.
This follows other reforms including on the appointment and removal of members of the judiciary, whereby the government relinquished its power to impeach magistrates and judges with a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Instead, it will be solely the Commission for the Administration of Justice which will have this power. This had been one of the requirements imposed on Malta by the Venice Commission.