The Never-Ending Crisis of Italian Justice: Role and Responsibility of its Governance System

Abstract

This article analyses four critical dimensions of the Italian justice system’s enduring condition critical: poor predictability of judicial decisions, lack of integrity, low trust, and excessive length of judicial procedures. While the first three critical areas have multiple causes, the role of the dual judicial governance structure, with competencies split between the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Council, is identified as a relevant cause of lengthy procedures. Judicial statistics show how procedural delays are caused by the inefficient use of available resources due to obsolete allocation mechanisms and high variations in courts’ efficiency. This article argues that cutting-edge resource-allocation systems and integrated court management mechanisms based on workload or performance indicators demand a sustained and coordinated effort between the Ministry and the Council, which may be hard to achieve. More generally, the different constituencies and the competence split between the two bodies make the implementation of integrated judicial management approaches unlikely. The explanation is based on structural and institutional features common to all systems in which two bodies share responsibility on the same policy and managerial areas, so findings are potentially relevant to all judiciaries with this feature. The analysis also gives a reason for the negative correlation between judicial governance settings based on the French or Italian model and judicial efficiency.