A Californian law professor who has spent the last month on the island with students as part of their law studies had nothing but words of praise for Malta and its judicial system.

Kenneth Klein, a veteran trial lawyer with 25 years experience who now lectures at the California Western School of law in San Diego, followed the case of Augustine Onuchukwu, 46, a Nigerian who was jailed for drug importation last month.

The proceedings being in English, was an ideal opportunity for his students and himself to witness a trial in a foreign country even though the American system is similar because of the British legal foundations.

Prof. Klein said he was impressed by the earnest manner in which the jurors and citizens conducted themselves in front of the court. Small things such as bowing to the Bench and dressing appropriately did simply not happen elsewhere, he noted.

Another thing that struck him was the high quality of the lawyers, he said, comparing the population of Malta to a community of roughly the same size in the US.

He met a number of Maltese judges who he described as thoughtful people. He was a strong believer in the community needing to have trust in its judicial system and that was what he witnessed in Malta, “a real strong point of the country”.

Prof. Klein said it seemed to him that when a successful practising lawyer became a judge the person would get a significant pay cut. “You would hope you don’t have to pay a price to be a good public servant... You would worry that, over time, that might affect the quality of the Bench but it doesn’t seem to have been the case so far”, he added.