Commissioner for Education

Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent A. De Gaetano, Commissioner for Education (2021 – )

Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent Anthony De Gaetano was educated at St Aloysius’ College, at the Royal University of Malta, and at the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College). He joined the Attorney General’s Office in 1979 and served as Deputy Attorney General from 1989 to 1994.

He served on a number Council of Europe expert committees and was president of the Steering Committee on Legal Cooperation (CDCJ) and chairman of the Multidisciplinary Group on Corruption (GMC). In 1994 he was appointed judge of the Superior Courts, and in 2002 was appointed Chief Justice. In 2010 he was elected to the European Court of Human Rights as the judge in respect of Malta and served as vice-president of Section IV and later as president of Section III of that Court. He retired from the court in Strasbourg in September 2019 after serving a full nine-year term.

In September 1988, he obtained his teacher’s warrant and was a lecturer and later senior lecturer in Criminal Law and Law of Criminal Procedure at the University of Malta, and a regular member of the Faculty of Laws, from 1991 to 2017. He has lectured and published extensively in Malta and abroad on legal and human rights topics. In March 2020, he was nominated by the Chamber of Advocates to sit on the Committee of Advocates and Legal Procurators of the Commission for the Administration of Justice and was elected chairperson of that committee by the other members. He relinquished this post after his first appointment as Commissioner for Education.

In January 2021, Chief Justice De Gaetano  was appointed Commissioner for Education within the Office of the Ombudsman for the remaining period of the mandate of the previous Commissioner who had died in office in November 2020. He was reappointed for a second term on 13 September 2022.

In January 2022, he was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Human Rights of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków. The appointment was made after the necessary clearance was obtained from the Speaker of the House of Representatives pursuant to the relative provisions of the Ombudsman Act.