Procedural tradition in the Italian Criminal Justice System

Abstract

The reform of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure (ccp) in 1989 was an ambitious attempt to transplant adversarial principles in a Criminal Justice System (CJS) that was rooted in its inquisitorial structure. From the pure legal perspective, the reform failed because the CJS appears now as a superimposition of adversarial values on a structure that remains inquisitorial. From the socio-legal comparative perspective, however, there are other contextual issues that deserve to be analysed. Following the introduction, I will focus on the changes that have taken place in the Italian ccp in 1989. This part of the article will explain the new semi-adversarial legal structure of the Italian CJS and the reasons why the current procedural system appears very complicated. The second part of the article will concentrate on the inquisitorial cultural resistance that Italian legal actors use to oppose the adversarial reform. The cultural analysis will be emphasised through the contextualisation of the 1989 reform in the Italian distinctive socio-political environment. In the third part I will analyse prosecutors’ legal culture to discuss the internalisation of adversarial principles in the Italian CJS. The conclusion will emphasise the importance of socio-legal asymmetrical comparisons to study the evolution and harmonisation of European procedural traditions.