The Importance of Being Open. Lessons from Abroad for the Italian Constitutional Court

A comparative overview shows clearly that the vast majority of European Constitutional Courts and the European Court of Human Rights permit judges to hand down multiple decisions. This is the case notwithstanding the civil law tradition that decisions come from the entire court and represent a single will, therefore precluding the identification of individual judicial personalities. This is not yet the case in Italy. It belongs to a small group of European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands) that does not allow constitutional court judges to write separate opinions. From a comparative perspective, something is missing. Something else is missing in the Italian model of constitutional adjudication. The absence of subjects advocating interests different from or complementary to those of the parties to the case is remarkable. The idea of amici curiae is foreign to the Italian Constitutional Court. Separate opinions favor transparency and honesty. A more open court is a more legitimate court, and the participation of all the interests and values involved in the litigation favors public acceptability. Both instances, in the end, could contribute to narrowing the present gap between the Constitutional Court and the people.