Carlo Nordio, born in 1947, has spent his life in the judiciary and has been Minister of Justice for just over a year. That’s exactly what he was entitled to: “Justice”, a book he wrote at the end of the 1990s and in which he called for the separation of magistrates’ careers. Almost 30 years have passed, and here is the separation of careers written unequivocally in a constitutional bill approved by the Council of Ministers.
So, Minister, will we have separate careers? That is, article 111 of the Constitution will finally be applied. But you said that it is not an ironclad reform. You are open to changes.
«No bill, by definition, is armored, because Parliament will discuss and decide in a sovereign way. Naturally, the overall structure of the reform will remain solid. The careers will be separate.”
Isn’t there the risk feared by some newspapers that we will return to a single CSM?
«A single CSM with two distinct sections was one of the options discussed. But in this way the operation is more clear-cut.”
Will the investigating judge be physically distant from the prosecutor?
«Physical distance also depends on judicial buildings. What matters is the distance in the CSM. Today the prosecutors, i.e. the accusers, give their votes to the judges. When we try to explain this extravagance to our foreign colleagues, they think we are crazy. At the last G7 in Venice, the American Attorney General and the British Lord Chancellor did not understand me and I began to doubt my English. Then I realized that they didn’t understand the concept: I explained myself better, and they were frozen.”
Will there no longer be those dinners on the terrace with judges and prosecutors at the same table?
«I hope they will always be there, and I also hope that lawyers will participate. As a prosecutor I had dinner with both of them, and perhaps the next day we discussed each other in the courtroom with a certain determination. The problem is not the shared coffee at the bar. The problem is that if the accused knew that his accuser was influencing the career of his judge, he would not be at peace. And he would be right.”
Two CSMs. What does it mean?
«It means that jurisdiction is a table with three legs and not two. There is the prosecution, the defense and the judge, third and impartial. It seems elementary to me.”
Why will the councilors be elected by drawing lots?
«Because the system in force today creates a more or less clientelistic bond between the voter and the elected. I would like all the candidates for the CSM to swear on their honor that they have never picked up the phone to ask their colleagues for votes, perhaps speaking badly of others. And that as many magistrates swore, on their honor, that they had never asked for favors from those they voted for and helped elect. The draw will break this decrepit system, and every magistrate will be freer.”
Will the draw send the current system into the attic?
“No. The currents will remain, and it is right that they remain, but in their original function: to make a cultural contribution of different orientations. But for some time they have degenerated into a divisive pathology denounced by the magistrates themselves, and never corrected. It is the one that created the Palamara system, and which many commentators, even authoritative and moderate, have defined as a vermin, or a cow market. The result was a vertical fall in the credibility of the judiciary among citizens, which, as a former colleague, I witnessed with pain.”
Il Fatto says it is Berlusconi’s posthumous victory. It is true?
«On principle I never comment on what il Fatto writes. And that’s the thing that irritates him the most.”
The ANM threatens strike
«Dialogue with them is always open. But as for the strike, I really hope they don’t decide on it, for a pure reason and a practical reason. The first, that if the judiciary wants to be the third power of the state it cannot go on strike: it would be as if the government or parliament went on strike. If, however, it intends to align itself with other legitimate instruments of trade union struggle, it exposes itself to the same discipline, not least injunction. And what do we do? Do we precept prosecutors?. It would be a metaphysical paradox. But practical reason is even more important: citizens would not understand that a category – rightly or wrongly considered privileged, well paid and without responsibility – would strike against a law desired by those who were democratically elected”.
Is Mattarella perplexed?
“Even a single word from a minister about the President of the Republic, to whom our reverent respect goes, would be improper.”
Magistrates fear that the Public Prosecutor may lose his independence. Like in France.
«Unfounded fear, and if I may add, specious. In the text of the Bill it is clearly written that the prosecuting judiciary is as autonomous and independent as the judging one. If tomorrow another Parliament wanted to change this rule, it would have to redo the same and opposite process of constitutional reform. And if I were still in the world, I would oppose it with all my strength.”
Why a High Court to judge magistrates?
«Because the current disciplinary section doesn’t work, and has never worked. It is a clearing house where, after a thousand negotiations, minimalist compromises are reached. Conviction sentences are very rare, and often platonic even in the face of serious episodes. The only ones who lose out are generally the magistrates who have no godfathers within the currents. An independent High Court will eliminate this anomaly.”
But isn’t the High Court also in danger of becoming a victim of the currents?
“No. Its composition by drawing lots among jurists of great authority will radically change things.”
Has a war broken out between the government and the magistrates?
“I hope not. We are very open to dialogue, but not to witness intolerable anomalies. We have debts of over three hundred million euros, due to compensation for trial delays. Italy was condemned a few days ago by the European Court of Human Rights for the abuse of wiretaps. There is even talk of incorrect interceptions, which I don’t even remotely want to believe. In fact, it would be of unprecedented gravity if a magistrate were to issue a provision without checking the correctness of the transcriptions. And I could go on and on. Well, if the Judiciary, in its sacrosanct independence, has not known and does not know how to put its own house in order, then the unilateral intervention of the sovereign parliament is inevitable. But if he proves responsible and animated by a real desire for reform, we, in absolute respect of his lofty mission, will listen to him with the utmost deference.”
There are those who say that this reform will never happen anyway. Which is just an electoral move
«The legislature lasts five years, and there is time. If this reform had been made with ordinary law it would have been incomplete, because the composition and appointment of the CSM would not have been affected. So we need a constitutional law, which has its time. But we will make it.”
What happened to the reform of abuse of office and the reform of wiretaps and the reform of arrest warrants?
«The abuse of office was dismissed by the Government over a year ago, after a few months it was approved by the Senate and by June it will go to the Chamber. It is a delay due, I believe, to the regulations of the House and Senate which should be reviewed, because they are outdated and incompatible with the dynamics of a modern democracy.”
On Thursday evening at Porta a Porta Vespa showed his book from 1997 in which, as a magistrate, he proposed the same remedies as today’s DDL. Do you see your expectations fulfilled?
«Yes, with great joy. I hope that the others contained in the book, which are still relevant today, will also be realized. For example that of the virtual file and the cloned file.”
What is the virtual file?
«It’s what a prosecutor keeps in his drawer to investigate a person, perhaps hypothesizing a non-existent crime, which allows him to request wiretaps: For example, contesting the mafia association. Then that offense falls, but the interceptions remain. It’s a way to evade the law.”
And the cloned one?
“Even worst. It is that of the Public Prosecutor who, since the deadlines for the investigations have expired, must ask for the case to be dismissed. He does it, but keeps a small piece of the file, and starts again from the beginning, and so on several times and for several years. Intolerable”.
Can you fix it?
“I really hope so”.
