A third of Malta’s 21 judges are due to retire within five years if the current retirement age of 65 is not raised before then. After losing Mr Justices Joseph Galea Debono, Carmel Agius and David Camilleri within a short period, and with Mr Justice Philip Sciberras retiring by the end of this year, the number of judges on the bench is depleting fast.
There have recently been several calls on the government to raise the retirement age but Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici has said this will not be done for the time being.
Besides Mr Justice Sciberras, who turns 65 in December, another six judges are in their 60s. Joseph Filletti is 64 and reaches retirement age next March, Geoffrey Valenzia is 63 and is due to retire in June 2012, while Lino Farrugia Sacco is 61 and retires in August 2014. Michael Mallia and Gino Camilleri are both 60, expected to retire in March and June 2015 respectively, while Lawrence Quintano, who was only promoted from magistrate a few weeks ago, is already 61 years old and will retire in July 2015.
Moreover, 12 of the 21 sitting judges are in their 50s, with half of them already past the 55 mark.
The situation is compounded by the fact that many lawyers are reluctant to take on a position in the judiciary because of what, in the legal profession, is considered to be a puny wage. The salary packages for the judiciary, including allowances, average from under €44,000 for magistrates to €50,000 for judges, with the Chief Justice earning around €56,500.
“Compare that to between €100,000 and €150,000 which an average lawyer in private practice can expect to earn,” one lawyer told The Times.
The situation with magistrates is not as bad as that of judges. But things are not rosy either. Of 17 sitting magistrates, who also retire at 65, the eldest is Joseph Apap Bologna, who turns 63 in February, followed by 58-year-old Magistrate Carol Peralta, who currently serves as an International Judge of the Appellate Division of the War Crimes Section of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo. Next in line to retire is Senior Magistrate Silvio Meli, who is 56 years old.
Announcing his retirement two weeks ago, Mr Justice Agius said judges were in their prime at 65 and should be allowed to serve until they began to experience health problems. In fact, although retiring from the Maltese judiciary, he will continue to serve on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
Writing in this newspaper last week, former Chief Justice John J. Cremona called it a “sheer waste of talent” for judges to stop working at 65 and made a case for a “reasonable rise” in the retirement age.
Last October, at the opening of the forensic year, no less a figure than Chief Justice Vincent de Gaetano called for the retirement age of members of the judiciary to be raised to 68.
Nationalist member of Parliament Franco Debono and Labour MP José Herrera, both criminal lawyers, are also convinced that it should be higher.
Chief Justice de Gaetano’s departure to take up a post on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg will only make the situation worse.
However, the Constitution does not impose that a judge must necessarily take the place of the Chief Justice: The government has the option of appointing someone who is not yet a member of the judiciary.