Archives » Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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Newsweek
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Mar 11, 2008 03:08 PM
By Barbie Nadeau
Every so often, when Italy's Corte Suprema di Cassazione
rules on an issue like whether a man's mistress who lies to police
really commits perjury (the answer, "No"), you'll see this assemblage
of notable jurists described as if their function were much the same as
that of the justices on the United States Supreme Court who rule on
constitutional issues.
Nope. In practice, if not in name, this
is the supreme court of extenuating circumstances. The translation of
"cassazione" is "cassation," a little-used word in English that means
abrogation or annulment by a higher authority. It comes from the same
Latin root as "quash." And unlike the American court of last resort,
the Italian one takes a more, well, Latin view of legislation. Laws in
Italy often are intended and almost always are received as a
description of idealized conduct, not common practice.
In fact,
much of the country's complex justice structure is set up to protect
those who might be victims of circumstance, trapped by outdated laws
still on the books that might have lost their relevance in the modern
world. But the cassation court, which draws panels of five from a pool
of 410 mostly elderly men and 10 middle aged women, has gotten so
eccentric it may also have lost some of its relevance.
The justices do rule on serious matters like human rights,
homicides and child abuse cases. (In late February the court upheld
the manslaughter convictions of five airport officials whose negligence
led to Italy's worst air disaster, a crash that killed 118 people at
Milan's Linate airport in 2001.) But they also rule on trivial cases
that tend to grab headlines for their sheer weirdness.
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