Abstract
The Supreme Court of Cassation is the Italian final court of appeal, but, in spite of its official name, the dimension of its caseload and the high number of judgments it issues each year make it impossible to state that it is a true supreme court. On the one hand, the long-standing crisis of the Court reflects the difficulties Italian civil justice has been experiencing in recent decades; on the other hand, at the root of the problems affecting the Court is the rule engraved in the Italian Constitution that grants an unconditional right to appeal to the Court of Cassation. Short of a reform of this constitutional provision (which is unique to the Italian legal system), all attempts at curbing the Court’s caseload so as to restore it to its original role as a supreme court are doomed to failure.
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Notes
- 1.
Brown v Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 540 (1953) (concurring).
- 2.
- 3.
See extensively Taruffo (1991a, pp. 27–50).
- 4.
See Picardi (2006, pp. 187–196).
- 5.
A few pre-unitary States of Italy had a supreme court operating as a court of revision: this was the case, for instance, in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venice that was part of the Austrian Empire. See Taruffo (1980, pp. 70–106).
- 6.
See Taruffo (1991a).
- 7.
Arts. 517–552 of the Code of Civil Procedure of 1865.
- 8.
Art. 65 of Royal Decree No. 12 of 30 January 1940.
- 9.
See Art. 24 of the Italian Constitution. All the Articles of the Constitution are cited in their official translation into English, a translation available on the website of the Italian Senate, at: www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_inglese.pdf (last accessed 8 April 2016).
- 10.
Reference is made to Art. 111(7) of the Italian Constitution, as amended in 1999.
- 11.
See Morelli (2009, No. 155, pp. 90–99), available at: www.csm.it/pages/quaderni.html (last accessed 8 April 2016).
- 12.
The grounds for review (of which there are five) are listed by Art. 360 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
- 13.
The definition of errores in judicando as ‘substantive errors’ is borrowed from Cappelletti and Perillo (1965, p. 274).
- 14.
- 15.
Cappelletti and Perillo (1965, p. 282).
- 16.
The rule referred to in the text is Art. 360-bis of the Code of Civil Procedure: this article is part of an extensive reform of the proceeding before the Court, a reform enacted in 2009. See Silvestri (2010, pp. 409–448).
- 17.
See supra note 16.
- 18.
Cappelletti and Perillo (1965, at p. 73).
- 19.
All the data regarding the Court of Cassation come from the statistics accompanying the written text of the speech delivered by the Chief Justice at the inauguration of the Judicial Term 2016: see Corte Suprema di cassazione—Relazione sull’amministrazione della giustizia nell’anno 2015—Intervento in aula di Giovanni Canzio, Primo Presidente della Corte Suprema di cassazione, available at: http://www.cortedicassazione.it/cassazione-resources/resources/-cms/documents/Relazione_sull_amministrazione_della_Giustizia_anno_2015_deL_Primo_Presidente_Giovanni_Canzio.pdf (last accessed 8 April 2016).
- 20.
The source of the data concerning the duration of proceedings before courts of first instance and courts of appeals is European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), Study on the functioning of judicial systems in the EU Member States Facts and figures from the CEPEJ questionnaires 2010–2012–2013 (Strasbourg, 16 February 2015), available at: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/effective-justice/files/cepj_study_scoreboard_2015_en.pdf (last accessed 8 April 2016), at p. 596.
- 21.
See supra note 19. The remaining judgments issued by the Court are miscellaneous, and include decisions by which the Court, for instance, addresses issues of jurisdiction, orders the dismissal of the proceeding for a variety of reasons or provides for the correction of clerical errors in its own judgments.
- 22.
See supra note 8.
- 23.
Reference is made to Art. 111(7) of the Italian Constitution in its official translation into English, available at: www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_-inglese.pdf (last accessed 8 April 2016).
- 24.
- 25.
See supra note 8.
- 26.
See the decision No. 207 of 9 July 2009 issued by the Constitutional Court. For an extensive comment to this judgment, see Carratta (2009), available at: www.treccani.it/-export/sites/default/magazine/diritto/approfondimenti/pdf/3_Carratta_corte_costituzionale.pdf (last accessed 8 April 2016).
- 27.
On the problems discussed in the text, see Silvestri (2001, pp. 105–116).
- 28.
See, for instance, Delcourt v Belgium (1970) (Appl. No. 2689/65, 17 July 1970), paras 25–26; Brualla Gomez de la Torre v Spain (1997) (Appl. No. 155/1996/774/975, 19 December 1997), paras 37–38; Dunayev v Russia (2007) (Appl. No. 70142/01, 24 August 2007), para 34.
- 29.
In addition to the cases mentioned above, supra note 28, see also, for instance, Khalfaoui v France (2000) (Appl. No. 34791/97, 14 March 2000), paras 36–37; Kreuz v Poland (2001) (Appl. No. 28249/95, 19 June 2001), paras 52–55; Liakopoulou v Greece (2006) (Appl. No. 20627/04, 24 May 2006), para 18.
- 30.
The expression ‘nomofilachia’ (from the Ancient Greek νόμος, the law, and φυλάσσω, to protect, to guard) first appeared in one of the ‘classics’ of Italian literature on civil procedure, that is, a monumental work (in two volumes) authored by Piero Calamandrei in 1920 on the Court of Cassation: Calamandrei (1976). Since then, it has become customary to use the expression ‘nomofilachia’ to describe by a single word the role assigned to the Court. It may be interesting to remark that not until 2006 did the expression gain a sort of official recognition, appearing (in its adjectival form ‘funzione nomofilattica’) for the first time in a legislative text that modified the rules governing an appeal to the Court of Cassation: see Lupo (2009, No. 155, pp. 67–89), available at: www.csm.it/pages/quaderni.html (last accessed 6 April 2016).
- 31.
See above, s 2.2.
- 32.
The bill mentioned in the text is known as Disegno di legge no. 2953-A—‘Delega al Governo recante disposizioni per l’efficienza del processo civile’. It is available on the official website of the Italian House of Representatives (in Italian, Camera dei Deputati), at: www.camera.it/leg17/522?tema=riforma_del_processo_civile (last accessed 6 April 2016).
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Silvestri, E. (2017). The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation: Of Misnomers and Unaccomplished Missions. In: van Rhee, C., Fu, Y. (eds) Supreme Courts in Transition in China and the West. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 59. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52344-6_11
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