ELSA Malta speech on administrative penalties

Abstract

I’m the last speaker today; thank you ELSA Malta for this, enabling me to keep my dental appointment and make it to today’s event. No I mean it, I’m not being sarcastic or anything. I specifically accepted the invitation on condition that I am not first speaker, because I had already postponed my dental appointment more times than I care to think about.

Having survived my dental appointment, I can concentrate on today. May I start by congratulating ELSA Malta on this initiative. At the Faculty of Laws we have three very active student organisations, which can be tiring, believe me, it sometimes is especially when the same initiative is taken multiple times and I have to go through the same thing over and over again; But on the other hand it means that multiple initiatives are taken because having three pyramids (you know how it is, pyramids get thinner as you go up) means there is more room for more students to be active. And more initiatives are taken. So, recently I was involved in one initiative on judicial review and a proposed reformative bill, and today it’s administrative fines and proposals for reform. Both very valid and both initiatives welcome, because they do the Students proud and show what our law students are made of. My argument is that if there was only one organisation concentrating on one initiative at a time, there would not be such a flow of ideas. The Govt, Parliament, is faced not with one Law Student proposal, but two, and the credit is theirs, of the students, and theirs alone. So Well done ELSA for this.