Dear Editor, divide and conquer. Even at Court. Rebalancing the Constitutional Court is one of the objectives of the majority that supports the Meloni government. And on this issue too, tensions will soon rise with the most authoritative former constitutional judge: the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. With the failure to replace a vacant position on which it is difficult to get the majority and opposition to agree, we have arrived, as they say in the corridors, at the practice of “package” appointments, to allow for a better division between the parties. Between now and December, the appointment of four new constitutional judges will have to be decided.
An agreement of the Parliament that must deliberate in joint session will be necessary to avoid the paralysis of the Court since the “functional quorum” requires, for a session to be valid, that at least eleven judges out of fifteen are present. At the end of the year, in fact, three other judges will expire – following the vacancy for the replacement of President Silvana Sciarra, who has not yet been replaced for seven months despite the law requiring promptness: President Augusto Barbera, Franco Modugno and Giulio Prosperetti. The clash will be white-hot.
Surprisingly, persistent rumours give the Keeper of the Seals Carlo Nordio in pole position, increasingly at ease in the capital and in Roman circles where he is often seen swimming on his back, receiving compliments from the ladies of “high society Rome”.
In terms of law, however, among the requirements to become a judge of the Consulta, one must be, or have been, a professor of law or a lawyer with at least twenty years of seniority: requirements that the minister does not possess. To get around the technicality, it seems that the legal affairs department of Palazzo Chigi is considering an ad hoc rule. But if on the right many are banking on the liberal Nordio, the more justiciar part of the left wants to try the Luciano Violante card once more. Today the former “everything” can count on a super wildcard: the undersecretary to the presidency of the Council, the very Catholic Alfredo Mantovano.
The secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, far from the logic of the Palace, is examining several CVs, including that of Massimo Luciani – professor of constitutional law at Sapienza – who, although he smells of conflict of interest for having sponsored several cases at the Consulta, has a few more chances than Vincenzo Cerulli Irelli, professor of administrative law also in Rome, who, luckily for him, has more Teramo vines than international publications.
The League would also like to have its say, proposing Ginevra Cerrina Feroni, professor of Italian and comparative constitutional law in Florence and vice president of the Privacy Authority. Meloni and especially Salvini are well aware of the increasingly politicized appointments of the Consulta. The umpteenth signal came when the Court itself rejected the Senate’s decision to grant parliamentary immunity to the League’s Armando Siri for some wiretaps from six years ago that had implicated him in an investigation into wind power in Sicily. The magistrates, according to Palazzo Madama, once they had ascertained that one of the people accidentally wiretapped was a parliamentarian, should have suspended the activity and asked for authorization to proceed. The Constitutional Court, on the other hand, deemed correct the practice of the so-called “trawl wiretaps” in which everything is caught, including “protected species” and, perhaps, especially those. Exactly the opposite of the line of the Executive and of a gentleman guarantor like Nordio.
For the constitutional judges elected by the Parliament in joint session, the rule has always been followed that provides for the choice of three members indicated by the majority and two indicated by the opposition. However, the process is not so fast. In 2014, when the then President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, evidently annoyed by the four months that had passed and by the twenty empty votes because an agreement might not be reached on the nomination of Violante, decided to anticipate his competence by three weeks, choosing a left-wing jurist, Daria De Pretis and a right-wing one, Nicolò Zanon, from the Berlusconi area. Even Mattarella, the true dominus of the Court, played it in advance when he designated Pitruzzella and Sciarrone Ali brandi in 2023.
The head of state has broad discretion in choosing the five constitutional judges assigned to him. Francesco Cossiga, in 1991, appointed without hesitation Giuliano Vassalli, a partisan, historic exponent of the PSI and former Minister of Justice.
It was 1995 and Oscar Luigi Scalfaro chose Gustavo Zagrebelsky, a talkative left-wing jurist who, from January to September 2004, at the end of his mandate, was president of the Court. And he does not refrain, with two other former presidents of the Consulta – Valerio Onida and Gaetano Silvestri – from signing an appeal, in 2022, once morest the hypothesis of Silvio Berlusconi at the Quirinale: «An insult just to nominate him». Today, on the reforms of the Meloni government, he states that «In Italy, presidentialism risks being based on hatred». And so on, with other jurists blatantly positioned on the left from Fernanda Contri, the first woman appointed to the Consulta, to Guido Neppi Modona.
In 2009, the Constitutional Court declared the Lodo Alfano, which provided for the suspension of trials for high-ranking officials of the State, unconstitutional. And while Umberto Bossi threatened a popular revolt and Silvio Berlusconi called the Court “left-wing”, President Napolitano accepted, sine glossa, the Court’s judgment. The same Napolitano who in 2013 appointed Giuliano Amato, an important member of the PSI, as a constitutional judge. At the end of his mandate, the coveted presidency was also for Mr. Sottile. He is the only one so far to have held the office of Prime Minister and of the Constitutional Court. After his failure to be appointed President of the Republic, however, “there’s no two without three” did not apply to him.
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2024-07-09 07:08:57
