“The undersigned magistrates of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Venice adhere to the press release of the National Association magistrates as they are against the division of the careers of magistrates with reporting functions and with judging functions”. It was the year 1994. Under the letter, on headed paper of the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Venice, dated 3 May 1994, sent according to when the judiciary, magazine of the National Magistrates Association,, via Fax, the headquarters of the ANM in Rome, the autographed signatures accompanied to avoid misunderstandings by a blockade to verify the authenticity of six magistrates, name surname and qualification: the quarter of these names was Carlo Nordio, deputy prosecutor of Venice.
At the first point of the appeal, the main argument contrary to the constitutional reform on the separation of careers, approved two days ago at first reading in the Senate: “In the history of republican Italy”, wrote the magistrates of the Milanese ANM in the press release, signed by the others including the Venetians, “the independence of the prosecutor with respect to the executive and the uniqueness of the judiciary has actually represented a guarantee for the affirmation of the legality and the protection of the principles of equality before the law”. During the parliamentary debate on the reform other similar signature had been contested in Nordio in 1992, probably the reference as we will see later is at the first drafting of the same text.
The question, of course, makes news: the Nordio prosecutor of that time is Nordio himself who today presents the separation of careers such as the reform of the reforms of the executive of which he is the minister of justice and that that argumentation, which at the time was willing to sign, today contested.
Today’s minister document in hand did not denote: «In ’92 we were between massacres and tangentopoli. I myself was the subject of attacks by politics because I had arrested Christian Democrats and socialists, and the judiciary had to remain compact. But three years later I wrote that we were exaggerating, and that radical reforms were needed ». To then add an interview to Newspaper: “The Newspaper and the Courier They came out with a title on the front page: “Judge Nordio regrets”. Since then, I have never changed my mind. And in 1997 I was called by the Anm probiviri to realize my heretical ideas. Of course I sent them to the hell. I recovered the correspondence and put it on the Ministry’s website ».
Nordio recalled that he has written the separation of careers “the first time 30 years ago, and of course I was heavily criticized by the ANM. It was not easy in those days to keep the bar straight. Now this company is being made ».
Obviously the question is arousing great clamor, also because that appeal, published for the first time on December 3, 1992 and then re -proposed because it is still considered valid in April 1994, contained arguments that are still on the table in the debateamong these The fact that the possibility of going from judging functions to reporters and vice versa was for the magistrates “an opportunity for professional enrichment” which “has guaranteed the Italian prosecutor to remain rooted in the culture of jurisdiction”.
Today these arguments are contradicted and contrasted by those who then, in a different role, signed them, among other 1502 signatures collected in all Italian judicial offices, but remain valid from the point of view of those who believe that the reform can prove to be a bad deal for the guarantees to the citizen in the justice machine.
It is not the only case in which a change of roles seems to have arisen newly all evident. The day before the approval in the Senate, the lawyer Fabio Pinelli, currently vice -president of the CSM elected among the members of parliamentary appointment at the center -right, supported on the microphones of Sky Tg 24: “The draw could abstract the authority of the CSM in abstract, but there is no risk of subjecting the judiciary to politics, indeed. The separation of careers is the last mile of the right process provided for by the Constitution “. It does not seem the same person that on January 10, 2023 he wrote in the magazine Question Question: “The so -called separation of careers is shown as a sort of structural necessity of our ordinance architrave, in the presence of – now ultra twenty years – constitutionalization of the” just trial “, which requires absolute thirdness of the judge, compared to the other procedural parties. At the same time, however, the common belonging of the public prosecutor, at the same judicial order of the judging magistrate, limits the risk of the investigative overwhelming power of the former: it protects it from the vulnus of his – so to speak – administrative relegation, to a mere top of the judicial police summit. This idea of the public prosecutor, on closer inspection, offers much less guarantees for the protection of the protagonists of the process, compared to the current standard (the one with the United careers nd.) Of its judicial role, and could affect the freedoms and rights of individuals in a particularly significant way “.
