Commissioner for Education at Commonwealth Law Conference in Malta and at Workshop on Religious Pluralism in Como
Published April 14, 2025
Commissioner for Education at Commonwealth Law Conference in Malta and at Workshop on Religious Pluralism in Como
Published April 14, 2025
The Commissioner for Education, Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent A. De Gaetano, last week participated in the 24th Commonwealth Law Conference Malta 2025 by presiding at one of the more important parallel session of the Conference on the subject of Delays, excessive duration, backlogs and resources of the Judiciary. The session, held at one of the Hilton Portomaso suites, was attended by over one hundred delegates from Commonwealth countries and was addressed by Lady Justice Abha Patel, judge of the Court of Appeal of Zambia, by the president of the Law Society of England and Wales, Mr Richard Atkinson, and by Ms Latoya McDowald-Hurley from the Rule of Law Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
In his opening remarks, the Chief Justice noted that the topic of the session was in many jurisdictions, including Malta, a sore point and constant irritant not only for judges and lawyers, but also for their clients and for court administrators and was ultimately a blot on the proper administration of justice and the Rule of Law. He added that delays and backlogs were often, albeit not necessarily always, a direct result of the lack of proper human and other resources available to the judiciary.
The Chief Justice pointed out that according to the recently published European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) statistics for 2024, out of a total of 485 judgments delivered by that Court finding a violation of Article 6 (the Right to a Fair Trial), in 114 of these judgments the ECtHR – perhaps predictably – found a violation of Art. 6 specifically because of the excessive delay in the determination of civil rights and obligations or of criminal charges.
After the speakers’ presentations there was a lively half hour participation from the floor by way of Q&As and comments from the delegates participating.
On Wednesday 9th April the Chief Justice was the keynote speaker at a workshop at one of the Como campuses of the Università dell’Insubria. The workshop focussed on religious minorities between the Mediterranean shores, and was part of wider project co-financed by, among others, the European Union and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Boosting a sustainable religious pluralism: Public Order and European Constitutional Identity.
The Chief Justice’s keynote paper was titled The ‘Public Order’ limitation to religious freedom under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Other participants and speakers at the workshop included academics from the Università dell’Insubria, the Università di Milano, the Fondazione Oasis and the University of Tunis.
