Law Blog

It is submitted that Maltese law on environmental damage should be read in a structured and sequential manner, with each legal instrument performing a distinct function and not being conflated with others. Articles 74, 76, 77 and 78 of Cap. 549 provide the statutory basis for stop and compliance orders and allied measures. In broad […]

One of the most persistent challenges faced by both planning practitioners and decision-makers is determining how planning policy should be approached and applied in practice. The difficulty lies not only in the complexity of individual policies but also in drawing the proper line between legal interpretation and planning discretion. The proper starting point is textual. […]

Any contemporary account of judicial review that discusses Wednesbury reasonableness has to acknowledge a standard critique: many scholars and practitioners regard it as vague, excessively deferential and ill-suited to a rights-sensitive administrative law. They complain that it hides judicial value-judgements behind the opaque phrase “so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could have come to it”, […]

A recurring issue which comes to mind in planning law is what happens when a lawful use is surrounded, years later, by more intensive development. Can those later “commitments” be turned against the earlier operator, to the point of choking off its right to continue? The recent judgment of the Court of Appeal (Inferior Jurisdiction) […]

In Maltese planning law, one of the murkiest issues practitioners face is when a seemingly minor addition to a property—like installing a sink and a fridge in an agricultural store —crosses the line into what’s legally considered a “material change of use.” Why does this matter? Because under Chapter 552 of the Laws of Malta […]

There are moments in administrative law where the silence of a tribunal says more than pages of elaboration. One such moment arises from the recent decision of the Maltese Court of Appeal (Inferior Jurisdiction) in Kim Vella u Sandra Farrugia vs Awtorità tal-Ippjanar et, App. 51/2024, decided on 15 October 2025. The case concerned an […]