The victims of “bad judiciary” have multiplied in recent decades. Perhaps they were the ones who had to campaign for the Yes vote in the referendum.
“In the name of the sovereign people…”: this is the formula that judges use in courts to announce the verdict. It is not a ritual formula but a passage that is innervated in the Constitutionwhich in article 101 establishes that “justice is administered in the name of the people”, the same people who in article 1 are defined as sovereign: “Sovereignty belongs to the people who exercise it in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution”.
Again in article 101, “judges are subject only to the law”. And the law is a matter of the legislative power, that is, of Parliament expression of the people who elect their representatives there. In short, everything is fine.
The mirage of popular sovereignty in the courts
Yet the people, when the courts are involved, seem to disappear. And what makes it disappear is not the abstract concept of Justice, but the magistrateswho are its operators. The long introduction not only serves to bring some order to the language of the referendum campaign but serves as a rigorous framework for a common error whose seriousness we no longer realize. There is no such thing as “bad justice” but at most there is one “bad judiciary”if we really want to give an idea of the wrong that some innocent people suffer. I would like to point out immediately that not even “bad judiciary” is really correct because the errors are to be attributed to those magistrates who persist in not seeing the facts in a detached and honest way or to those who even hide the exculpatory evidence of the person under investigation.
However, the concept of “bad judiciary” is certainly more appropriate than the overused “bad justice” because, in the absence of a civil liability of judges to rely on to obtain compensation, it is the judiciary itself that takes responsibility for those who make mistakes, when it is called upon to express itself at a disciplinary level. Does he do it? The data says no.
The magistrates intent on defending the status quo by committing themselves to reject the reform continue to appeal to the Constitution in force as if they were its only praetorian guards; it would be good to reply to them with the “Magna Carta” in hand where the letter of the articles does not affect their autonomy and independence just as it does not affect that article which gives the people the centrality of justice. They never say this. And they don’t say it for the simple reason that they have arbitrarily replaced citizens in the central role of justice. Their interpretation – or rather we could say their “material Constitution” – rewrote 101 more or less like this: “Justice is administered by magistrates”. And that’s not good.
The drama of impunity and the new Tortora cases
There “non-responsibility” of the robes with respect to their mistakes is the greatest example of this thought not only because as we have already written they are not responsible for certain actions (from unjust imprisonment to the convictions of innocent people) but also because we witness questionable promotions. Therefore all the beautiful phrases «Never again cases like Enzo Tortora» don’t make any sense: after the drama linked to the Portobello presenter, the Tortora cases have multiplied.
It is for this reason that hearing from ordinary people that “but it can’t happen to me” is dangerous. Falling into “bad judiciary” is not at all exceptional. The news is full of people, ordinary people or VIPs (go and look at the cases of footballers Beppe Gentlemen or Michele Padovano) that they would never again imagine going to a police station and then not returning home for a long time, ending up among registered criminals.
This is why, more than parliamentarians, this campaign should have left room for victims of “bad judiciary”to their story of what it means to end up in prison as an innocent person; of what it means to not have money to be able to affirm one’s truth or to empty one’s account and get into debt to cope with the tools of one Power of attorney which interprets the role of the prosecution in a Taliban way, with a clear disproportion of money and means compared to the defense; of what it means to try to rebuild your life – both on a human and professional level – after the final sentence of acquittal with everyone always looking at you with distrust. They were the ones who had to talk about how the unjust guilty sentences were pronounced in the name of the prosecutor rather than in the name of the Italian people.
