Governmental liability, immunity and Article 6 of the 'ECHR'

Abstract

The prominence of the issue concerning the limits of Governmental liability in tort in the study of Maltese Administrative Law has survived the end of the distinction between acts 'iure imperii' and acts 'iure gestionis' as a determinant of State liability in our case law. It may be that the question of 'Governmental Liability in Malta', eloquently brought to the fore by the late Professor Wallace Gulia through his book by the same title, published more than thirty years ago, raises so many intriguing questions about the nature and origins of Maltese Administrative Law that we simply cannot help keeping the subject on the agenda. The discussion is nevertheless not lacking in relevance. After all, the present being the result or, some would say the 'funeral', of the past, anyone taking an interest in the Administrative law of Malta may at least deem it proper to familiarise with the way in which the basis of that law was perceived in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century and with how it changed and developed to become what it is today.