The Faculty of Law will tomorrow grant an award for academic excellence to one of its luminaries, nonagenarian judge Maurice Caruana Curran.

The judge was born in Valletta on June 11, 1918, and was educated at the Old Lyceum and then at the Royal University of Malta where he graduated BA (1939) and LL.D. (1943).

He was immediately set to be involved in humanitarian causes to which he gave priority soon after the outbreak of WWII. In 1943, at the height of the war, he was offered a Rhodes scholarship at the University of Oxford, which he reluctantly had to turn down to assist his family and his beloved Valletta to recover from the ravages of war.

He was already a leading member of the second Malta National Assembly (1944-1946) that made proposals for the restoration of responsible government in Malta by virtue of the grant of a new Letters Patent Constitution. He joined the Attorney General’s Office, was appointed Deputy Attorney General and figured as one of the leading State advocates. Meanwhile, he furthered his studies in legal and civic matters in the US.

He left an indelible mark as a legal luminary endowed with unrivalled acumen in the role of prosecutor in the well-remembered trial by juries Regina v Terreni (1956) and Regina v Camilleri (1961).

Indeed, he has been one of Malta’s most distinguished lawyers specialising in criminal law during his long and versatile career. In 1963, he was appointed one of Her Majesty’s judges at the age of 45. From 1974 he served as senior judge and as Acting Chief Justice on many occasions.

He delivered a number of landmark judgments in criminal, civil and administrative law and came to be considered as an icon by the Maltese legal community.

He occupies pride of place as the person who pioneered the law of judicial review of the administration in Maltese law to the extent of inducing the State to legislate for the first time on the matter. He formulated a solid mechanism for the quantification of damages in tort cases under civil law.

Noted for his independent mind and his forthright defence of human rights, President Emeritus Ugo Mifsud Bonnici described him as “the islands’ bastion of liberty”. He retired from the Bench in 1983.

From 1950 to 1963, he was a lecturer in law at the Royal University of Malta, served as Chancellor of the University of Malta from 1988 to 1995 and, in 1987, was appointed president of the Medical Council of Malta.

He is considered by everyone to be the pioneer of the national conservation movement. In July 1965, he founded Din l-Art Ħelwa. He was soon to become an outspoken and fearless leader in the field of environmental and heritage conservation.

He figured all along as a man of great culture in the widest sense of the term. But he was also an active sportsman and served as president of the Malta Football Association and of the Malta Amateur Athletic Association. He was even a much-loved actor and played leading roles for the Malta Amateur Dramatic Company and British Council Players.

In 1993, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Merit of Malta.

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