If judges considered the political effects of verdicts, it would be the end of democracy

Every ruling by the judiciary is an act of democracy. Certainly, those who are convicted often feel that the verdict is unjust, when they don’t even claim their total innocence. But that’s how it works in a democracy. There are people who do proper studies, pass a competitive public examination (or are elected by the citizens) and take on the role of magistrate.

What is defended in democracies is the independence of the judiciary, particularly from political power and, in general, from any interference. Otherwise, the system would not work, and this power, which is the power of all citizens, would become someone’s weapon.

On the other hand, legislators make laws, and magistrates enforce them. There are indeed many ways of enforcing laws, but it is always true that the laws themselves enable this.

Magistrates can be, politically, right-wing, left-wing, centrist, or disinterested. As can any of us. Parliament is full of magistrates on leave, and Italian governments rarely lack a former magistrate. In the one now in office, I can think of a few, one of whom is the minister of justice and another the premier’s top aide at Palazzo Chigi. They are certainly definable as right-wingers since the Meloni government is not technical.

To say that the judiciary “is left-wing” or “of a certain left-wing” or that it is “a certain judiciary” in Italy, as they say now about France, is nonsense. Not least because in order to get to a verdict, a case goes through so many of those magistrates that to think that for certain trials, a dark force can only put together “communist magistrates” is laughable. There are, of course, good magistrates, some not so good, some perhaps bad, some who seek visibility (good and not so good). A body is provided for in the Constitution to monitor these elements and take appropriate action.

For all these reasons and more, I remain a bit puzzled observing the debate around the verdict that convicted Marine Le Pen in Paris. It did not convict only her; there were 24 defendants, and they were all convicted. I understand that Le Pen and her friends are angry and rambling; she will not be able to run in the presidential election, that she has already lost three times, but she had good reasons to believe she could win the next one. She is out, the project of a lifetime is blown when it was almost done, and now the French extreme right is in danger of exploding, giving birth to who knows what leaders. Certainly, the crime these magistrates think Le Pen and the others have committed has not been good for the extreme right, neither in France nor in other countries.

In contrast, I do not understand so many analysts who, commenting on the possible effects of this sentence, seem to imply that perhaps the judges should have considered political factors before deciding. I read a negative assessment of the sentence between the lines of many commentators because it could, according to some analyses, strengthen the French far right.

The issue is not the conviction; it is the fact of which Le Pen, according to this first sentence—toward which she will appeal—is guilty. It is not possible not to consider this. If a politician, as the judges accuse, in agreement with high party colleagues, appropriates money illegitimately, he commits a serious act, more serious, I would say, than if a private citizen committed the same crime for reasons all his own.

In short, the analysis should not be on the fear of consequences but on the knowledge that Le Pen was convicted in the first instance, after a long trial (at the end of which the prosecution had asked for an even greater sentence), for having committed, knowingly and for twelve or thirteen consecutive years, a crime. This is where the commentary must start, from the fact for which the conviction came, which can help define the person and her political actions, not on the effects of a conviction on which, for some, the magistrates should have thought differently, taking into consideration the possible political effects.