Abstract
This contribution analyses the constitutional and legislative rules aimed at ensuring the independence of the Italian Constitutional Court and its accountability, both as a whole and in relation to the single judges. The effectiveness and the impact of such rules are then assessed in practice, also in light of bipolar constitutionalism. The author concludes that the Italian Constitution seems to be strongly inclined towards a solid independence of the Court, with a rather low degree of accountability. It is also concluded that such rules work properly in practice, making the Court an independent institution, and allowing it to effectively protect the Constitution from possible manipulations by the dominant groups. It is then argued that the Court is able to serve as an intermediary between law and politics, ‘jurisdictionalising’ politics into the legal procedures and, at the same time, ‘politicizing’ its judicial role through the political nature of the matters examined and the political effects of its decisions.
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Notes
- 1.
In this contribution, the English translation of the articles of the Constitution is from the text published by the Parliamentary Information, Archives and Publications Office of the Senate Service for Official Reports and Communication, available on the website of the Senate: https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_inglese.pdf. Accessed 1 March 2019.
- 2.
Article 134 of the Constitution.
- 3.
Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 320.
- 4.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 688.
- 5.
Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 320.
- 6.
Russell 2001, p 1, where the author notes that, however, there is ‘little agreement on just what this condition of judicial independence is, or on what kind or how much judicial independence is required for a liberal democratic regime, or on the societal conditions on which judicial independence depends’.
- 7.
Peri 2012, p 2, where it is argued that more and more countries in the world are now finding themselves in what has been defined (by A Paterson) as a ‘conundrum of the apparently insoluble tension between judicial independence and judicial accountability’. As noted by the author, judicial accountability shall be considered separate from judicial responsibility because ‘the last one generally arises from the violation of norms’, while accountability ‘affects in some way ethics and governance (for this reason it is often called “ultimate responsibility”’ (Peri 2012, p 3).
- 8.
Ibid., p 4.
- 9.
These are laws with the same strength as the Constitution and that are adopted following the special procedure provided by Article 138 of the Constitution.
- 10.
Under Article 138 of the Constitution ‘[l]aws amending the Constitution and other constitutional laws shall be adopted by each House after two successive debates at intervals of not less than three months, and shall be approved by an absolute majority of the members of each House in the second voting. Said laws are submitted to a popular referendum when, within three months of their publication, such request is made by one-fifth of the members of a House or five hundred thousand voters or five Regional Councils. The law submitted to referendum shall not be promulgated if not approved by a majority of valid votes. A referendum shall not be held if the law has been approved in the second voting by each of the Houses by a majority of two-thirds of the members’.
- 11.
Zagrebelsky and Marcenò 2018, p 63. The previous Constitution, i.e. the 1848 ‘Statuto Albertino’, was a flexible constitution as it could be amended through an ordinary legislative procedure and therefore created no need for a judicial review of the legislation.
- 12.
Article 1, para 2 of the Constitution, states that ‘Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution’.
- 13.
However, it has been argued that ‘the experience of more than 50 years of judicial review in Italy (…) has seen an evolution towards a much more decentralized system, (…) a system in which the ordinary judges also play an important role in constitutional review’ (Groppi 2008, p 101).
- 14.
Actually, the idea of establishing a court with the role of ensuring and protecting the rigidity of the Constitution emerged even before the start of the works of the Constituent Assembly. However, in the first phases of the debate, no real discussion took place in relation to the composition of such a court or in relation to its independence.
- 15.
According to one of the proposals discussed by the Constituent Assembly, the nature of the Court should have been at the same time political, legal and technical ‘because these are the elements of any norm’. As a result, it was proposed that the Court should have been composed of members elected by the Parliament, members elected by the judicature or coming from the legal profession, together with deans of the faculties of engineering, of medicine, or natural sciences.
- 16.
As noted in Groppi 2008, p 102, these powers are typical of constitutional tribunals.
- 17.
The analysis of the decisional practice of the Court shows that this is the power that has been exercised the most over the years, in particular as regards the ‘incidental’ review of certified questions.
- 18.
Article 134 of the Constitution.
- 19.
Article 2 of Constitutional Law no. 1/1953. Pursuant to article 75 of the Constitution, the referendum to repeal laws can be promoted by 500,000 voters, or five regional councils.
- 20.
See Groppi 2008, pp 102–104.
- 21.
A form of direct review is however possible when the national government or a regional government challenge, respectively, a regional or a national statute (Article 127 of the Constitution). Individual citizens, parliamentary groups or local governments do not have direct access to the Court. It is to be noted that this form of review is very relevant in quantitative terms: more than 35% of the decisions of the Court in 2017 were in direct review cases.
- 22.
Under Article 27 of Law no. 87/1953, ‘The Constitutional Court, when it accepts an application or petition involving a question of constitutionality of a law or act having force of law, shall declare, within the limit of the challenge, which of the legislative provisions are illegitimate’, although in any case the Court may also decide to state ‘which are the other legislative provisions whose illegitimacy arises as a consequence of the decision adopted’.
- 23.
Such judgments are universally binding and produce retroactive effects, with the exception of the principle of res iudicata (except for criminal cases).
- 24.
Such decisions do not state the constitutionality of the law but they simply reject a specific challenge which was submitted against that law, and only in the form in which it was submitted to its review. In addition, they do not have an erga omnes effect.
- 25.
As noted in Groppi 2008, pp 105–106, the Court was able - due to the wide discretion it enjoys in interpreting its procedure and practice - to develop such a variety of judgments, with the aim of addressing the necessity to respond to specific practical needs.
- 26.
The systematization applied here is only one of the many possible systematizations that have been proposed by the doctrine in relation to the different rules aimed at ensuring the independence of the Court.
- 27.
In other words, ‘judicial selection process is not a neutral procedure: norms which refer to judicial selection, like all the positive norms in the system, convey a value’. This is because ‘the method to select the judiciary is so rooted in a broader context which involves various individuals, groups and political institutions which can influence judicial independence’ (Peri 2012, pp 2–3).
- 28.
Just as in many other constitutional legal orders, the rules on the composition of the Italian Constitutional Court are contained either in the Constitution or in constitutional laws. This is considered to be a way not only to emphasize the special status of the Court but also to give it the necessary legitimation to exercise its role in terms of review of the legislation and for the institutional compromises. However, it can be noted that Italy belongs to the jurisdictions where the written procedural rules on the appointment of the constitutional judges are not excessively detailed and this lack of detailed rules is not compensated by a considerable transparency and involvement of the public in the process of appointment (as it is for example in the United States, where the procedure is very informal but involves several institutional and non-institutional players) (Peri 2012, pp 6–7).
- 29.
The tension between these two features influenced the debate between the political parties sitting in the Constituent Assembly. In the same context, it was stressed that the Court should also have a strong judicial character, in order to ensure its impartiality and its independence from the legislative power (which it was called to control) and from the government. On the other hand, it was proposed to establish a link between the election of the judges of the Court and the political elections: according to this proposal, the Parliament would have elected the judges at the beginning of each legislature and the term of both the Parliament and the Court would have had the same duration. However, this proposal was rejected, together with several other alternatives, in order to ensure the independence of the Court from the political parties sitting in the Parliament and in order to avoid establishing an excessively close connection between the Court and the political power. The original wording of the relevant provision regulating the procedure for the renewal of the composition of the Court foresaw a partial renewal, designed in order to ensure the maximum level of independence of the Court from the political parties who had elected its members. However, such mechanism proved to be so difficult to be applied in practice that it was necessary to amend it rather soon; at the same time, the whole provision of the Constitution concerning the composition of the Court was substantially amended, leading to its current language.
- 30.
The high number of judges is coherent with the role and the nature of the Italian Constitutional Court, which is called to ensure the balance in the constitutional system and exercise a role of guardian of respect for the Constitution. It is in fact observed that bigger courts are in general conceived to increase the ‘judiciousness’ of their decisions, thus making them fitter for such a guaranty role (Peri 2012, p 7).
- 31.
It has been noted that the judges elected by the highest Courts come from the same single Courts electing them, but this is not considered to be an issue for the independence of the Court, which is considered to be sufficiently ensured by the whole system for the election of the judges. See Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 322.
- 32.
The mixed composition of the Court recalls the traditional separation of powers described by Montesquieu (Celotto 2006, p 34) but it is also considered to be a consequence of the mixed nature of the body, which is neither representative nor bureaucratic, and which needs to be able to play a role which is at the same time technical and political in nature (Conti 2006). As explained by Zagrebelsky 1992, the meaning of the composition of the Court is linked to the balancing between legal needs (consistent with the fundamentally judicial nature of the Italian constitutional review) and the institutional-political needs (consistent with the nature of the role attributed to the Court). In addition, it has also been noted that the three components of the Court represent a way of merging in an independent body three different elements: the representatives of the people (the Parliament), the national unity (the President of the Republic) and the primacy of the law (the judicature) (D’Orazio 1966, p 160). This mixed composition is aimed at ensuring that the Court has the technical knowledge and the political sensibility needed to carry out its functions and, at the same time, the strong legitimation, the credibility and the authority towards the subjects who are called to implement its decisions (i.e. the judges, the Parliament and the rest of the country) (Conti 2006).
- 33.
D’Orazio 1966, p 165.
- 34.
Article 3 of Constitutional Law no. 2/1967, amending Article 3 of Law no. 87/1953, which required the majority of the three fifth of the members of the Parliament for the first three ballots and the majority of the three fifth of the members of the Parliament present at the voting.
- 35.
For several years (between the end of World War Two and the beginning of the Nineties), the consolidated practice in the election of the members of the Court by the Parliament was that the main political parties would share the judges as follows: two judges to the Christian Democrats, one to the Socialist Party, one to the Communist Party and one to the smaller parties (liberal and republican parties).
Now that the Italian political scenario is more complicated and less stable this practice does not always apply with the same degree of certainty. Bin 2009, p 4026, argues that only an ‘institutional slovenliness’ can explain why there is not a practice requesting that the justices are heard and examined by the Parliament in joint session before their appointment, as it happens for example in the United States.
- 36.
The doctrine has in fact clarified that the President is autonomous in his decision for the appointment of the five presidential judges. Contrary to what happens for the ordinary decrees of the President of the Republic (the DPRs), which are proposed by the Government or by the Ministers and signed by the President, the decree for the appointment of the judges of the Constitutional Court is proposed and signed by the President, although it is also counter-signed by the President of the Council of Ministers. There are however opposite views on this aspect, of those who claim that, in practice, because the President is elected by the two chambers by absolute majority, he can be considered as an agent of the Parliament, also in the act of appointing the judges of the Constitutional Court and that this theory is further supported by the fact that the appointment of the five presidential justices is preceded by informal consultations with the political parties and the Government (Fiorino et al. 2007, p 689).
- 37.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 690.
- 38.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 690, where it is noted that the Court already operated with less than fifteen judges in several occasions (sometimes also for long time) and this impacted its structural independence. Several legislative proposals have been tabled, over the years, aiming at changing the rules on the composition of the Court. In particular, in 2004 a proposal was discussed by the Italian Parliament, which would have changed the rules for the selection of the judges, by reducing the number of the judges appointed by the President of the Republic and by the judiciary (from five to four each) and by increasing the number of judges appointed by the Parliament. In addition, the parliamentary nominees would have been appointed by a Federal Senate, and not by the two chambers of the Parliament in joint sitting. The reform failed to be adopted and the content of the new rules was criticized by several commentators, in particular because it was considered as increasing the weight of the political component of the Court (by reducing the number of judges which were not appointed according to political criteria). Furthermore, it was argued that the proposed changes would have introduced a sort of ‘federalist factor’ to the Constitutional Court, thus changing the nature and the position of the body, especially in relation to the conflicts between the State and the Regions (Peri 2012, p 18).
- 39.
Article 135, second paragraph, of the Constitution.
- 40.
Conti 2006.
- 41.
Peri 2012, p 8. This observation seems to be confirmed by the fact that the judges of the Italian Constitutional Court typically come from the judiciary or academia, with no or very limited involvement in politics. This is the current composition of the Court: five members are former members of the judiciary, while nine members are former professors of law.
- 42.
Article 2 of Constitutional Law no. 2/1967.
- 43.
Debated cases relating to the Court’s responsibility to verify that its members meet the criteria set out above are the confirmation of judge Bucciarelli Ducci in 1977, of judge Contri in 1996 and of judge Napolitano in 2006. In particular, in the first case the Court argued that the fact that the candidate had served as the President of the Chamber of Deputies would correspond to the exercise of the functions of judge of the supreme courts, because it was a proof of the same level of independence and impartiality.
- 44.
Article 8 of Law no. 87/1953. A traditional discussion related to whether such prohibition also included the prohibition for the constitutional justices to register with a political party, which is a right of all citizens under Article 49 of the Constitution. The answer to this question depends on the extension of the scope of the notion of ‘activities’ and on how much the notion of independence of the Constitutional Court can in fact be linked to the notion of independence of the judiciary as a whole.
- 45.
Even the scholars who have opposed the idea that the position of the two categories of judges should be assimilated recognized that such principle applies to the Constitutional judges as well as to ordinary judges.
- 46.
Bin 2009, p 4019.
- 47.
Article 3 of Constitutional Law no. 1/1948; Article 7 of Constitutional Law no. 1/1953; Article 11 of Law no. 87/1953.
- 48.
Article 3, para 1, of Constitutional Law no. 1/1948.
- 49.
Conti 2006.
- 50.
Ibid. This has never happened in practice, while there have been cases in which judges have resigned before the end of their tenure, not always for health reasons.
- 51.
Article 5 of Constitutional Law no. 1/1953.
- 52.
Article 3, second paragraph, of Constitutional Law no. 1/1948.
- 53.
Constitutional Law no. 3/1993.
- 54.
Article 68, para 2, of the Constitution now states: ‘In default of the authorisation of his House, no Member of Parliament may be submitted to personal or home search, nor may he be arrested or otherwise deprived of his personal freedom, nor held in detention, except when a final court sentence is enforced, or when the Member is apprehended in the act of committing an offence for which arrest flagrante delicto is mandatory’.
- 55.
Sandulli 1966. In addition, it has also been noted that the instrument of the required authorization to prosecute has a much more relevant role when it relates to the protection of the integrity of the Court (which is composed of only fifteen judges) rather than when it relates to the protection of the Parliament (composed of almost one thousand members). In the first case, the risk is considerably higher that a series of prosecutions could substantially paralyze the Court. For the reasons above, several scholars advocate for the maintenance of the required authorization to prosecute for the judges of the Court (Conti 2006). As regards in particular the President of the Constitutional Court, a law of 2003 had provided for the suspension of any criminal prosecution against him or her, as well as of the prosecution against the individuals holding the highest offices of the State (the President of the Republic, the President of the Council of Ministers, the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the President of the Senate). Such law, however, has been declared in breach of the Constitution by the very Constitutional Court, which among other things considered it to be discriminatory, because it unduly differentiated between the Presidents and the members of those institutions (Decision of the Constitutional Court n. 24/2004).
- 56.
Article 20 of the Statute of the Constitutional Court.
- 57.
Conti 2006.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
Volcansek 2006, where the author claims the absolute independence of the judges of the Constitutional Court, despite the so-called ‘lottizzazione’, i.e. the ‘division whereby virtually all sectors of Italian civil life are allocated on the basis of political party affiliation’.
- 60.
Collegiate judgements are considered to be a common feature of continental European courts (except for Germany), as opposed to common law courts (where dissenting and concurring opinions are allowed) and serve the purpose of favouring judicial independence (Peri 2012, p 19).
- 61.
Peri 2012, p 19. However, it shall be observed that, in an increasing number of decisions, the judge rapporteur is replaced by another judge of the Court for the drafting of the final decision: this is considered as a sign of the dissent of the rapporteur towards the decision of the college.
- 62.
As stated in Article 29, Norme integrative giudizi costituzionali (OJ n. 261 of 7 November 2008), with the exception of the proceedings for charges brought against the President of the Republic for high treason and attempt to overthrow the Constitution (Article 25 of Law no. 20/1962).
- 63.
- 64.
See for example decision of the Constitutional Court n. 103 of 1964.
- 65.
As noted by Bin 2009, p 4023, this might also explains why the abstention and the objection only apply, among the different proceedings that can be submitted to the Constitutional Court, to the criminal charges brought against the President of the Republic, which may be considered as the only case in which it is possible that real reasons for abstention or objection may arise, due to the concrete and specific nature of the dispute (very different from, for example, the review of the admissibility of a referendum, whose object is very abstract).
- 66.
For example, this would be the case if a judge issues a statement on the press where he takes position in relation to a delicate question of constitutionality currently pending before the Court.
- 67.
Bin 2009, p 4025.
- 68.
As it is for example for the judges of the Supreme Court in the U.S.; see Tega 2018, p 439.
- 69.
Peri 2012, p 11.
- 70.
Constitutional Law no. 2/1967, which amended Article 135, para 3, of the Constitution.
- 71.
Article 135 of the Constitution.
- 72.
However, it shall also be noted that the President of the Court does not enjoy the same considerable power, for example, of the Chief justices in the United States or Canada (Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 323).
- 73.
As mentioned above, Article 1, para 2 of the Constitution, states that ‘Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution’, thus providing both legitimacy and accountability to the Court.
- 74.
De Vergottini and Frosini 2010, p 7.
- 75.
Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 319. It is therefore not surprising that these kind of studies have been carried out in the past by economists.
- 76.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 694, where the authors highlight that these decisions modify the legislation, and therefore have a considerable impact. The authors reject the theory that the high rate of judicial invalidation is a consequence of the political miscalculation of the legislator or of strategic choices of the disputants. The first hypothesis is excluded on the basis that Italian politicians would enact a statute that the voters want in that specific moment, although they know the Court will strike it down; the second one because it is very difficult for the disputants to foresee the final decision of the Court, due to the fact that it is for the local tribunal to decide to submit the case of potential illegitimacy to the Court, and due to the fact that much depends on the rapporteur and the Panel that are appointed.
- 77.
This is defined as a system in which judge A supports judge B in a decision aimed at (directly or indirectly) favouring judge B’s interests in exchange for judge B’s support in a decision which favours judge A’s interests (Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 323). In particular, the functioning of this system within the Italian Constitutional Court is made extremely difficult by the fact that only a small number of the judges can be involved, by the special role of the rapporteurs in the decision-making process, by the importance and the weight of precedent decisions on similar cases, and by the rules on the adoption of the decisions (simple majority and lack of dissenting opinions) which make the decisions anonymous.
- 78.
Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 324.
- 79.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 683.
- 80.
To be noted, anyway, that while political alliances have traditionally been stable, governments changed very often.
- 81.
In more recent years, we witnessed a switch towards a sort of three or four party system; however, it is probably too early to assess its impact on the whole checks and balances structure and on the independence of the Constitutional Court.
- 82.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 686.
- 83.
Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 325.
- 84.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 694.
- 85.
As it occurs in the context of the bipolar constitutionalism, as explained in Van der Schyff 2010, p 5.
- 86.
Koopmans 2003, p 250.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Mortati 1949, 460.
- 89.
Groppi 2008, pp 110–111.
- 90.
Celotto 2009, p 21.
- 91.
Franciscis and Zannini 1992.
- 92.
Groppi 2008, pp 113–114.
- 93.
In recent years, however, the Court’s case-law on conflicts became more and more consolidated and decisions rarely include significant new statements of principle.
- 94.
Celotto 2009, pp 21–22.
- 95.
As noted by Groppi 2008, pp 106, this was made technically possible through the theoretical distinction between ‘disposizione’ (the legal text) and ‘norma’ (the norm) (Crisafulli 1956, pp 929–939). Such distinction allows to ‘derive multiple norms from a single text or a single norm from multiple texts’ and, therefore, allows the Court to ‘operate with more surgical precision’ and allows the system to evolve.
- 96.
- 97.
It was noted that the fact that the Constitutional Court may interfere in the activity of the legislator is obvious and represents a necessary consequence of the constitutional norms providing for forms of control on the legislation. The very fact that it is accepted - and explicitly allowed - that a judicial review is exercised on the constitutionality of the statutes means that the Constitution allows for a judgement to compete or to prevail over the law (De Vergottini and Frosini 2010, p 3).
- 98.
However, the use of the additive di principio has also been subjected to criticism because they attribute to the judge the power to decide which rule shall be applied in the specific case, until the intervention of the Parliament.
- 99.
Clearly, this type of decisions created problems in relation to their effectiveness, because, while in some instances ordinary judges would consider them to be directly applicable to the specific case, in most cases ordinary judges would rather prefer to wait for the Parliament to intervene and adopt the ‘missing’ provision.
- 100.
Groppi 2008, p 109, where the author also notes that the Court has over the years also attempted to mitigate the effects of its decisions declaring laws as unconstitutional, taking into account the needs connected with the social welfare state and the limits to public economic resources.
- 101.
Ruggeri and Spadaro 2004.
- 102.
Paladin 1998.
- 103.
Luther 1997. On the other hand, others have argued that the Court had to adopt such an approach to ‘fix’ the defects of the Italian legislation.
- 104.
See in particular Peri 2012, pp 22–23, where the author has carried out a comparison among the Constitutional Courts of a number of jurisdictions, and has concluded that Italy opted for the highest level of independence and the lowest level of accountability.
- 105.
Peri 2012, p 17.
- 106.
Breton and Fraschini 2003, p 319.
- 107.
Fiorino et al. 2007, p 683.
- 108.
However, when compared to constitutional courts of other jurisdictions, the Italian Constitutional Court is often considered one of those with the smallest degree of politicization, at least as regards the norms provided for the appointment of the judges. In particular, this is derived from the following features: (i) two thirds of the judges are appointed by a college and not by a single person; (ii) a quite considerable number of judges are appointed by the judiciary and not by political powers; and (iii) all the powers of the State are involved in the appointment procedure (Peri 2012, p 16).
- 109.
However, it has also been noted that because of the delicate role it has been attributed by the Constitution, the Court has never been fully accepted and its authority recognized by politicians. It is in particular claimed that recently the decisions of the Court are often not followed by the legislator or are strongly criticized by policitians and public opinion: this is seen as a serious problem, considering that the Court does not have powers to impose its decisions, and its force lies with its prestige and the consensus it enjoys (Bin 2009, p 4028). It has been observed that the approach of the Court to such situation has been very cautious, in order to ‘preserve its legitimacy and to defend itself against an increasingly aggressive political power’, not trying to make a ‘direct link with public opinion’ but rather deciding to ‘“disappear” from the headlines, devolving a large part of its job to other actors’ (Groppi 2008, p 116). According to the author, this is particularly achieved by decentralizing its work (i.e. involving ordinary judges in constitutional review) and increasingly looking at supranational jurisdictions.
- 110.
It can be observed, however, that a similarly soft approach was adopted in cases relating to the breach of procedural rules on the ordinary legislative procedure.
- 111.
Modugno 1970, p XI.
- 112.
Cheli 1996, 13.
- 113.
Elia 1984, p 163.
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Celotto, A. (2020). Italy and Its Constitutional Court. In: Hirsch Ballin, E., van der Schyff, G., Stremler, M. (eds) European Yearbook of Constitutional Law 2019. European Yearbook of Constitutional Law, vol 1. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-359-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-359-7_4
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Publisher Name: T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague
Print ISBN: 978-94-6265-358-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-6265-359-7
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)