Two new judges and three magistrates are expected to be sworn in shortly.
Magistrates Silvio Meli and Antonio Ellul will be promoted to judges and lawyers Francesco Depasquale, Josette Demicoli and Neville Camilleri will be appointed magistrates in the coming days.
Dr Meli, 56, has been serving in the Magistrates’ Court for the past 11 years. During his career, characterised by further academic development, he served as president of the Commission for Fair Trading and also sat on a number of administrative tribunals. He was member of the Commission for the Administration of Justice and deputy chairman of the Judicial Studies Committee.
He also represented Malta on several committees of the Council of Europe and is the president of the National Commission Against Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
Dr Meli is married and has three children.
Dr Ellul, 44, who graduated in law in 1993, became magistrate in 2007 and served in the Gozo Courts. He has served as Deputy Court Registrar, spent a year working as junior legal officer at the Attorney General’s office and worked in a private practice specialising in civil and commercial law.
He also served as judicial assistant and acted as legal adviser to the Archdiocese of Malta and was adjudicator on the Small Claims Tribunal.
Dr Depasquale became a lawyer in 1995. Throughout his career, he sat on the Domestic Panel and Traffic Collisions Panel of the Malta Arbitration Centre and was appointed arbitrator in various maritime issues. He served as Commissioner for Justice and was principal legal adviser to the Court Registrar.
The 40-year-old lawyer, who is married with two children, also worked as a judicial assistant and legal secretary to the Chief Justice and as an elected member on the Council of Europe’s Committee of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice.
Dr Camilleri, 37, graduated in law in 1999 and was a partner in a private practice. In 2004, he was appointed member of the Refugee Appeals Board, he served as arbitrator in voluntary and mandatory arbitration cases and was ap-pointed Deputy Defender of the Bond at the Ecclesiastical Tribunal.
Dr Demicoli, also 37, became a lawyer in 1997 and has since worked as a judicial assistant and spent over two years working at the Attorney General’s office before taking up private practice.