Requirement and judge, doubts about the reform

On the other hand, the establishment of a High Court, rightly a single court for ordinary judges and prosecutors, to which disciplinary jurisdiction is to be attributed, subtracting it from the Superior Council of the Magistracy (or the hypothesised two Superior Councils of the Magistracy), is to be looked at carefully in the bill.

Albeit with glaring shortcomings regarding the functioning of the judgement of appeals against sentences issued in first instance (which should take place "before the High Court itself, which judges without the participation of the members who concurred in pronouncing the contested decision"), the institution of the High Court, of constitutional importance, is interesting at the level of prospective principle because if it is really composed of persons of recognised authority, it would affect, at the same time, both the perception of substantial impunity of magistrates (from which derives the coeval, very bad, feeling of caste-like self-referentiality), and the weight of the 'currents' within the judiciary (with the introduction of the 'draw' of the envisaged 6 judging magistrates and 3 requirenti).

These have always represented a strong devaluation of the principle of independence, which is an absolute value and cannot only be flaunted to the outside world.

It is difficult, very difficult, to be coeval and belonging.

The 'currents' contain and cultivate the virus of amicism which, alongside familism, has played and continues to play, in general, a fundamental role in the moral decline of our country: anything that serves to eliminate this degeneration is to be welcomed and encouraged.

For the rest, against any attempt to reduce its operativeness, the functioning of our criminal justice system is to be protected, by increasingly exalting the principle of conviction 'beyond all reasonable doubt' and advocating the prompt sanctioning of those who, through abuse of their functions or, almost worse, through absolute inertia, are manifestly unfit to be part of the judiciary.

It is always necessary to distinguish the behaviour of individuals from the architecture of the system, which, if solid, must at the very least be strengthened and in any case protected by intervening, promptly, against those who jeopardise its resilience.

The concepts of the unity of judicial culture, of the contamination of knowledge and sensitivities, must be continually reinforced and, perhaps, the direction to take to achieve this goal should be the opposite of the current one: for example, by revising the judicial system and legislating in the sense of making the possibility of exercising the functions of public prosecutor conditional on the prior exercise of judiciary functions for at least four years.