Although in many international biographical dictionaries J.J. Cremona usually figures as an international jurist, what is not so well known about him is that he also leads a double life as a poet and writer. In the legal field he has held in Malta the offices of Attorney General, in which capacity he played a major role in the Independence talks and also drafted the Independence Constitution (described by Secretary of State Duncan Sandys at the Independence Conference as “a very admirable job”), Pro-Chancellor and Council President of the University, member of the Executive and of the Consultative Councils of Government under the 1959 and the 1961 Constitutions, Vice-President of the Constitutional Court and in 1971, Chief Justice. On several occasions he assumed, in an acting capacity, the functions of Head of State (Governor-General and later, President). Apart from other degrees, he holds four doctorates: D.Litt. (Rome), LL.D. (Malta), Ph.D. (London) and Dr. Jur. (Trieste). At the University he was first lecturer in constitutional law (with the personal title of professor conferred upon him “on grounds of special distinction”) and then professor of criminal law. He is also president of the Malta Association of Human Rights and of other constituted bodies. At the international level, he has sat on the board or committee of various human rights law journals and associations in Europe and America and has been invited to participate, with written reports, in numerous international congresses. He was for many years a judge and later the Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in which latter capacity he presided over many cases and prepared working papers for meetings with other courts. In 1986 he was elected chairman of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in New York and Geneva. In 2000 several international jurists joined together to present him with a Festschrift in his honour entitled Mainly Human Rights: Studies in honour of J.J. Cremona.
Among his many other distinctions are the Hon. Fellowship of the London School of Economics (London) and of the Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislacion (Madrid), the Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society (U.K.), membership of the Institut International des Droits del ‘Homme (Strnsbourg), reserved for distinguished international human rights jurists, the vice-presidency of the European Tribunal in matters of State Immunity (Council of Europe) and the hon. chairmanship of the human rights section of the World Association of Lawyers (WAL) (Washington). He is a Companion of the National Order of Merit (Malta), Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Knight of the Most Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem (U.K.), Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur (France), Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (Vatican), Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit (Italy) and Knight Grand Cross of the Constantinian Order.
He has several publications to his name, his more recent books, internationally reviewed, being Selected Papers 1946-1989 (1990), The Maltese Constitution and Constitutional History since 1813 (1994, 2nd ed. 1997), Malta and Britain: the Early Constitutions (1996) and Selected Papers (1990-2000) Vol. II (2002).
In the literary field he has had his poems published and/or translated in poetry reviews of various countries and has published three books of poems, the latest being Malta Malta (1992). He was vice-president of the International Poetry Society when the president was Christopher Fry, and the English Association chose him to represent Malta in its anthology Commonwealth Poems of Today (1967). British poet laureate Cecil Day Lewis read one of his poems at the Manoel Theatre (1969) and in 1992 Queen Elizabeth II read one of his war poems at the inauguration of the Siege Bell Memorial in Valletta. His war poems have also been set to music by composer Charles Camilleri (War Cantata, 2002).

Born in Xaghra, Gozo in 1918, son of Chev. Dr. Antonio and Anne Camilleri he married the late Marchioness Beatrice Barbaro of St. George and has a son Antony and two daughters Anne and Mary.