Into the finest fine print
Reading! Reading is my second nature. As a child I read everything that had words in it. You cannot imagine how odd, it did not matter, I read it: ingredients, warnings on cleaning agents, billboards in the street and so on and so forth. Fortunately also the more serious reading material, obligatory literature for school. Once as a teenager, when I was in want of a new book, I started reading a dictionary. I think I got as far as the letter F, when a more captivating book presented itself. Reading is still my hobby. I devour Grisham’s, Sheldon’s, but I also like to pull a sturdy (auto) biography out of the bookshelves. As a real bookworm, I sometimes quite easily even read four books simultaneously.
It is this reading which also plays an important role in my daily work. Whether this concerns jurisprudence, or even more important, reading the file thoroughly, a significant part of my work consists of absorbing written texts.
The lawyer in practice
Immediately after completing his studies in Dutch law at the University of Amsterdam, Mirto entered the law practice in 1996 in the Netherlands Antilles. As a lawyer he has dedicated himself to three fields of law to wit: banking and financial law, and (economic and fiscal) criminal law.
His performance is characterized by punctuality and profundity, but primarily by “out-of-the-box creative thinking” within the margins of the law. Reading all kinds of reading material is therefore also to his benefit here.
Apart from the strictly businesslike aspects of the services of a lawyer, Mirto also tries to make himself useful in other capacities. Thus he acted as President of the Bar Association in Curaçao in the period from 2001 up to and including 2005, at that time only 33 years of age, the youngest president in the history of the Bar.
An ample five years Mirto was furthermore member of the Board of the Foundation for Professional Training of Law Practice. At the vocational training for young lawyers Mirto participates still as a tutor in criminal law, the law of criminal procedure and in behavioral law.
Mirto regularly publishes legal articles in (legal and non-legal) magazines and papers. At the annotation of “The Parliamentary History of the (new) Civil Code of the Netherlands Antilles.
[ISBN 90 5850 118 3] Mirto was the initiator and acted as the editor. Said book, which came into being in co-operation with four colleagues in the law offices of Small Murray Scheper, attorneys-at-law, was described by the Governor-General of the Netherlands Antilles as historiography, since it is the first time in the Kingdom of the Netherlands that the explanatory memorandum on the complete Civil Code has been assembled in one single handy volume.
With pleasure Mirto, together with Gerard Spong and Dr. Roan Lamp wrote the chapter “The legal adviser in the Netherlands Antilles” in the now renowned Manual for Defense, under joint editorship of Professor Ties Prakken and Professor Taru Spronken.
Since 2005 Mirto has been a co-editor of the authoritative legal magazine for the Netherlands Antilles, the “Magazine for Antillean Law” TAR Justicia”
Mirto is a member of the committee on “Revision of the Criminal Code”, created by the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands Antilles and assessment of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Apart from this, he has been a member as of 2005 of the Selection Committee for Candidates to be trained as Judges, also at the nomination of the Minister of Justice. |
