Dr Christopher Soler was
appointed State Advocate by the President of the Republic on 19 October 2020
further to a recommendation by the Prime Minister in terms of a report compiled
by an independent Appointment Commission composed of three retired judges and
chaired by Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Azzopardi.
He holds a Master of
Arts (M.A.) in Contemporary European Studies from the Sussex European
Institute, University of Sussex (UK), a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International
Criminal Law from the Centre for Legal Studies, University of Sussex (UK), a
Doctorate in law (LL.D.) from the University of Malta and a Ph.D. in public
international law from the University of Amsterdam.
Dr Soler acted as Director,
Legal Services, of the University of Malta between February 2008 and September
2020, and as Chairperson of the Refugee Appeals Board between August 2013 and
August 2020. He worked as a criminal court-appointed expert, acted as legal
counsel at trials by jury, extradition proceedings and in high-profile criminal
and constitutional (human rights) cases before courts enjoying criminal
jurisdiction, the Constitutional Court of Malta and also before the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
He also represented clients who were accused before Italian, Tunisian
and United States criminal courts. Since obtaining his warrant to exercise the
legal profession in the year 2000, he has been lecturing, examining and
supervising theses particularly in the fields of Maltese criminal law, public
international law, international criminal law, international human rights law, refugee
law and criminology (namely, victimology). He participated in seminars and
conferences on international refugee law at the Jean Monnet Centre of
Excellence on Migrants’ Rights in the Mediterranean based in Napoli, Italy.
Dr Soler attended the fifteenth
session of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court in The Hague as a member of the Maltese
delegation. Under the auspices of the Maltese Presidency of the EU Council,
after undertaking training administered by the École Nationale d’Administration of Strasbourg, he chaired the Comité Juridique – International
Criminal Court and the Comité Juridique
– Public International Law Working Groups of the EU Council between January and
June 2017.
In 2019, T.M.C. Asser
Press and Springer Verlag published and distributed his book titled ‘The Global
Prosecution of Core Crimes under International Law’. Dr Soler also published
legal materials with Oxford University Press, Wolters Kluwer and in local law journals
such as ‘Law and Practice’ issued by the Malta Chamber of Advocates, ‘Id-Dritt’ issued by the Malta Law
Students’ Society, and in the ‘Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights’ issued by
the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta.