In these days, a citizen who turns on TV has the feeling of being in the middle of a gigantic conflict between state powers, often struggles to orient himself in the fiery debate that sees the government and judiciary contrast. TOBbiamo asked Roberto Bin, long ordinary of constitutional law in Ferrara, author of one of the most used constitutional manuals in Italian universities, to help us understand how to interpret what happens to the light of paper.
Professor, how should we read this clash between powers, even if we like the word clash little?
«Not as a clash with equal arms: more than a flying of rags between powers I see a shooting at the target of the government against the judiciary. The judiciary makes its duty, investigates, issues sentences, applies the laws and laws are the metaphorical chains that prevent the powers from spreading, but the temptation to spread is strong and the chains like less and less. Power tends to take everything and the judiciary is one of the counterpoters, as is the Constitutional Court. The stall is very serious, so the Parliament does not elect the members of the Court of its competence for a time immemorial, so much so that now an influence to a judge would be enough for the Court to work to work “.
Tension in our country is not new …
“True, the serious thing is that we are getting used to accepting that members of the executive call magistrates” red togas “, an insult, a very serious thing. Getting prestigious to the judiciary is not a good service to the country, in England it would be intolerable. The result is the disaffection of people to vote, but those who do not vote lets them be few to decide for everyone: it does not realize that the disintegration of the institutions leads to the disintegration of the rights of each of us ».
In some ways, dialectic in liberal constitutionalism is physiological, not by chance from Montesquieu on the guarantee bodies, CSM, the Constitutional Court, are mixed. What divides physiology from pathology?
«I would say education. Degree is not necessary to do politics but a political-institutional culture is needed. Once upon a time he came out of the factory and to put himself in politics, we entered the party schools, today the party schools failed, he makes himself politics without adequate training. The result are ruling classes to which the ABC of the institutions is also missing: speaking by a university professor, which is what they are, I would say they are ignorant. Only in this way do they explain inconceivable expressions such as that of a Prime Minister who in Sicily spoke of taxes as a “state lace”, words that indicate inability to grasp the institutional moments “.
The criticism of the judiciary is that when it protests for a law under discussion, it does politics. Is there this risk?
“The magistrates have their representative organizations, and fortunately they have them these times, and have the constitutional right of freedom of opinion and association as everyone. It is normal that protest, like all trade union organizations, if they perceive that another power is passing the limit. I do not always defend the magistrates, but to become magistrates you have to study, pass a very hard competition, make an internship, have the tools to be educated to institutional respect, which I think are missing these days to those who use the government tones that of respect institutional have very little ».
We see that social networks are often the main communication tool, even those who govern, without evident mediations, say their own in a video and publish it independently without needing someone to do more or less uncomfortable questions. How does this impact on democratic balances?
«Unfortunately badly: the most worrying thing is not so much that an aggressive figure like Trump wins the elections, but the fact that we have allowed and fueled a huge financial concentration in the hands of a few: the history of the world is the story of laws that seek to delimiting the power of sovereigns, armies, dictators, but the financial power in the hands of very rich very rich is a recent phenomenon, due to the fact that we have managed the exit from the economic crisis badly and by the pandemic by printing coin that ended up in the hands of a few very clever than if if I grabbed it ».
How dangerous is contemporary concentration in the same financial power and techno-information tools pervasive?
«Very dangerous, but it is a problem of the past, because there is no longer a need to hold printing and TV concentrations to direct the masses, the information now passes through the social networks governed by by no well knows who and in any case in the hands of very powerful Private that decide the rules, apply the censorship, then remove it on a whim. To be clear that Elon Musk gives judgments on the President of the German Republic is an inconceivable thing and it amazes me that there has not been a strong reaction. Let’s try to imagine what would happen if President Mattarella said in a social network that Tesla does not brake well. What would happen? ».
Do you risk that the castle that holds our civil life undergoes landslides?
«The habit of massacring the institutions is being affirmed, a bad sign of a degenerated system. We have already laid out a lot and the landslide is a slow process like the landslides in the mountains does not happen to be all over a blow. But it is a process that is difficult to arrest because the opposition is not making a sufficiently deep battle on the high bottom values ».
One of the things that makes you discuss is that a reform such as the separation of careers, which as a constitutional, requires large majorities in the classroom with armored text not open to the amendments. How improper this way is?
“It is a way that would disgust the constituent fathers.”
What do you think of the reform?
«In Germany, training is common not only for prosecutors and judges, but also for lawyers, notaries, professors of law. Common formation is a value, it was the idea of the Bassanini school but the guilds did not want to. It is important that prosecutors and judges have common training because we entrust the investigations to the prosecutor but also our guarantees in investigations ».
