The Debacle of the Italian Justice System: Who Is to Blame?

And now, after the verdict on Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the killing of British student Meredith Kercher, the U.S. media is getting its own back against the Italian justice system and, to a degree, against the Italians themselves (here are two eloquent examples). And, what’s worse, I think they are basically right: the Italian justice is a worldwide embarrassment, but a large number of Italians bear moral responsibility for that. I’m specifically talking of left-wingers and liberals, who for reasons of political calculation have been blindly rallying behind left-wing magistrates whose main purpose was/is to destroy their opponents—right-wingers and moderates, whom they regard as enemies, not just political rivals—rather than to pursue justice.

This attitude has understandably generated a sort of delirium of omnipotence on the part of a number of magistrates. They never fail, they never commit mistakes, they never even exaggerate, they always tell the truth and do not try to deceive people or break the law, and they are always super partes—no matter if they act as political activists and show their deep contempt for one political party or another, in both private and public occasions—this is, in the best case, the arrière pensée which “inspires” the vast majority of the Italian liberals and left-wingers. In the worst case, and not infrequently, they are obviously in bad faith, but the outcome is exactly the same.

Yet now, perhaps, it is time for those people to pay the bill, or to start doing so.