Law Blog

21. 02
2026

Evidential Onus in Maltese Planning Law

The question whether “evidential onus” to justify a development proposal is placed upon an applicant in planning law cannot be answered without first clarifying what is meant by onus in a doctrinal sense. In classical common law theory, as developed in classical administrative and evidentiary jurisprudence, a distinction is drawn between the legal burden of […]
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18. 02
2026

Forced Sales in Co-Ownership: Article 495A Cases Gone Wrong

Co-ownership disputes often become difficult not because the law is unclear, but because parties treat a statutory route as if it were a broad discretion. Article 495A of the Civil Code (Chapter 16 of the Laws of Malta) is not an equitable shortcut. It is a tightly framed mechanism: it contains a jurisdictional gateway, it […]
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09. 02
2026

Halland Judgment: A recast approach to Conflicting Planning Policies

The Halland case is best read as a Court-led re-statement of what the Planning Authority and the Tribunal may lawfully do when a Local Plan contains two site-relevant provisions that cannot sit comfortably together. The site lay within the North Harbours Local Plan area and was tied to two competing map-driven signals: the zoning treatment […]
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02. 02
2026

ADPD’s Constitutional Decision

In approaching the claims advanced by ADPD and its candidates, one cannot but record a measure of admiration for the intellectual ambition of their challenge. Even for readers who may ultimately accept the outcome reached by the Constitutional Court, the applicants’ submissions remain striking for their clarity, inventiveness, and disciplined attempt to expose a structural […]
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19. 01
2026

My article on ‘Constitutional Governance’ in Times of Malta

Legal arguments are not written only because something is imminent. They are often written to correct misthinking and to set the record straight. They may be advanced to alert, to provoke counter-argument, or precisely because they may be partially—or even intrinsically—mistaken. That is how serious scholarship evolves. Legal writing in the public sphere is therefore […]
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