Editorial of dossier “The criminal prosecution of corruption as an instrument of political struggle”

Abstract

Usually, according to the grammar of the modern political-constitutional systems of civil law, the places of politics are the Parliament and the government; judges and courts are governed by other principles, those of merit ascertained impartially and under conditions of equality. On the one hand, the elective principle, on the other, the selective principle. Judges are connected to politics only indirectly, through the law, which the Judiciary must obey. Parliament and government are the places of democracy, the other is the home of the best, or of technicians, or of competence. However, dogmas and concepts that once signaled the distinction between what pertains to the judiciary and what, on the other hand, escapes its dominion, become in turn elusive, and to overcome many difficulties that derive from these ambiguities, it is now silently headed to a hybrid figure of the "political magistrate".

Passing through the myth of the "strong man", powered by the anti-elitist spirit and some social bitterness, up to the current absence of gravitas in the management of collective decisions, to the ways of forming public opinion and its influence on political decisions , in this editorial the Authors reflect on the interpretative frameworks of the transformations we are experiencing - widely discussed in the Italian criminal procedure system – aiming to stimulate the debate on the theme of the "fight against corruption", both from a general perspective, and, more specifically, in its relations with the principle of criminal legality.