COMMISSION ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MUNICIPAL COURTS

Terms of Reference

The administration of Justice in Malta is basically centralised in that the vast majority of both civil and criminal courts cases are heard in one building, the Law Courts in Valletta. The exceptions to this are two-fold:

1. the vast majority of cases originating in Gozo are nowadays heard in Gozo itself. This institution is of long standing;
   
2. since 1998 depenalised offences – principally traffic related offences - are heard in Local Tribunals of which there are nine in Malta and one in Gozo.

Notwithstanding the above exceptions, the Law Courts in Valletta deal with thousands of cases introduced every year, cases of both a civil and criminal nature. These cases are heard by Magistrates and Judges.

When analysing trends over a number of years, Malta is experiencing the same phenomena as is evident in other European and North American countries namely more complicated and complex cases being put forward – cases which require a qualitatively higher degree of input from the judiciary.

The European trend, which has produced encouraging results, is to create and/or extend the jurisdiction of lower courts and tribunals.

Thus, the financial competence of Tribunals dealing with small civil claims is on the increase in various countries whilst others have increased the number of specialised tribunals dealing with particular fields of civil and criminal law. In addition to this, various countries are experimenting with enforced conciliation and mediation procedures in a sustained effort to decrease the number of civil cases going to the "traditional" courts.

Malta has followed this experience to some extent in the civil field in that the last years have seen three trends:

1. the increase in the financial competence of the Small Claims Tribunal and that of the Magistrates Court which should lead to a lower caseload in the Superior Courts;
   
2. the introduction of Arbitration which, however, has had little impact to date;
   
3. the setting up of various administrative tribunals intended to deal with disputes under legislation dealing with different administrative areas such as communications, transport etc.

In the criminal field, no such initiative has yet been taken. Whilst the amendments to the Criminal Code presently before Parliament do address certain procedural bottlenecks, they are not primarily intended as a strategic initiative to decrease the number of cases being dealt with by Magistrates. In fact, the trend in the last ten years has been to increase the number of serious criminal cases being heard by Magistrate whilst little has been done to decrease the number of less serious cases being heard by them.

The Ministry of Justice believes that it is opportune to examine what can be done in order to decrease the number of cases being heard by Magistrate by transferring part of their present caseload to Commissioner of Justice under a new Municipal Court System.

The Commission is consequently tasked to:

1. identify what cases presently being heard by Magistrate can be transferred to hearing by commissioners for Justice and in doing so to give particular attention to so called "District cases";
   
2. in view of the consequent increase in the workload of the Commissioners of Justice to examine in detail the feasibility of setting up a Municipal Court structure consisting of five Courts in Malta and a Court in Gozo (which structure would incorporate the present Local Tribunals) and suggest the principals on which it should be based.
   
3. to advise on the logistical, administrative, IT financial and human resource requirements of the Municipal Court structure and develop an implementation timetable;
   
4. to suggest necessary amendments to legislation.

The Commission is expected to report by the end of March 2002.