Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Italy showing regional borders and capitals
- 1 The political context
- 2 The Christian Democrats: The indispensable center?
- 3 The Communists' struggle for legitimacy and acceptance
- 4 The ambiguous role of the Socialists
- 5 The small parties: The lay forces and the extremes
- 6 Parliament, prime minister, and president
- 7 Public administration and sottogoverno
- 8 The administration of justice
- 9 Dangers to the state: Plots, terrorism, and the mafia
- 10 Economic and social transformation
- 11 Regional devolution and the problem of the South
- 12 The changing relations between church and state
- 13 Foreign and security policy
- 14 “But it does move” – a summing up
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The administration of justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Italy showing regional borders and capitals
- 1 The political context
- 2 The Christian Democrats: The indispensable center?
- 3 The Communists' struggle for legitimacy and acceptance
- 4 The ambiguous role of the Socialists
- 5 The small parties: The lay forces and the extremes
- 6 Parliament, prime minister, and president
- 7 Public administration and sottogoverno
- 8 The administration of justice
- 9 Dangers to the state: Plots, terrorism, and the mafia
- 10 Economic and social transformation
- 11 Regional devolution and the problem of the South
- 12 The changing relations between church and state
- 13 Foreign and security policy
- 14 “But it does move” – a summing up
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
One of the outstanding paradoxes in Italian public life is the contrast between the heavy web of laws that hangs over everyday life and the contempt that the person in the street generally exhibits toward all legal regulations. Cynics maintain that violating the law is one of the requisites in the art of survival in Italy and that the country indeed functions only because laws of greater or lesser importance are ignored. In any case the dichotomy between the paese legale and the paese reale, between the “legal Italy” and the “real Italy,” is a fundamental one. The country's legal tradition extends far back into the past and is still cultivated in the universities. But the everyday world of legal reality is all too often one of malfunctioning courts, a politicized judiciary, arbitrary judges, and inadequately protected civil liberties. Hence the taunt that Italy is the cradle of law but the grave of justice.
The administration of justice faces growing problems throughout the Western world but probably nowhere more than in Italy. The dramatic rise of political terrorism, mafia operations, domestic and international drug trafficking, massive illegal arms sales, kidnapping, and ordinary criminality places crushing burdens on the judicial system while exposing its weaknesses more clearly than ever. As a consequence the problems of the legal system vie with the economic situation as the predominant concern of the public and government alike.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- ItalyA Difficult Democracy: A Survey of Italian Politics, pp. 150 - 169Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986
- 2
- Cited by