You miss the point that NONE of them is a good choice for the judiciary.

Good choices for the judiciary are not based on ‘controlling well the hall’ but on being unencumbered by awkward baggage of a party-political or personal nature.

How hard is this to understand.

Consuelo Herrera is unsuitable because she sleeps or slept around and had affairs with prosecutors, because she consciously and deliberately builds political and business networks that serve her interests and those of her associates, and because she behaves in ways that compromise her in the eyes of others and in reality.

She can ‘control well the hall’ to kingdom come. That is a side issue.

As for working hard – spare me. She works fast, not hard. Hard workers do not spend the hours after 2pm organising, holding and going to parties or networking like a locust.

I don’t know Giovanni Griscti from Adam and so can’t comment, but Joanne Vella Cuschieri is a failed Labour Party 2013 general election candidate who hangs around with her junkie brother and his weird friends, and with Manuel Mallia at Gzira boxing matches, so no thank you.

And as for Wenzu MIntoff – why should people like me have to appear before him? There you have it. A person is wholly unsuitable to be made a judge or magistrate if there exists an entire group or class of persons who doubt that they will be fairly tried by him.

I’m surprised you don’t understand this. When you appoint a judge, you don’t appoint a controversial person and then hope for the best and look for positive things to say. You just don’t appoint him (or her) in the first place.

Do you even know that the chief justice – not this one, but his predecessor – withdrew an entire tranche of cases from Magistrate Herrera when I began to expose – with facts and photographs – the extent of her socialising with plaintiffs, defendants and politicians in general? She used to hear libel cases, but all libel cases were removed from her and passed on to other magistrates and she has not been allocated a single one since.

Why should the courts of justice have to operate in such circumstances, with magistrates openly and visibly not trusted to hear certain cases?

On the other hand, Herrera certainly deserved to become one much more than Giovanni Grixti who was one of the laziest magistrates around and who is in a relationship which has raised lots of eyebrows.

Herrera works hard, hands extremely studied judgments and controls well the hall. On the other hand, people in the know state that she is an accident waiting to happen due to the investigations underway at the Commission.

Lawrence Mintoff controls well the hall as well but it is too early to judge the quality of his judgments. Considering his lack of court experience, he is acquitting himself decently.

Joanne Vella Cuschieri is probably the greatest disappointment : though she is a hard worker and controls well the hall, the quality of her judgments leaves much to be desired. She seems to be sacrificing the quality of her judgments to the quantity she manages to churn out. She is probably the antithesis of Judge Joseph R Micallef : she is regular in her judgments but they are of dubious quality indeed, Aggrieved parties would have to wait another three-four years to get their case heard while hoping for the best. She doesn’t seem to have been a good choice for the judiciary.