A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #205 - Justice Referendum 2026: Asking Citizens What the Legislature Should Do (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The justice referendum scheduled for March presents citizens with five 
questions, but leaves out a crucial one: "Do you want to replace the 
legislature in reforming the judiciary?" Indeed, although formally 
"justice" is a matter subject to referendum, substantively it involves 
extremely delicate procedural balances and produces effects that are 
difficult to predict. This assessment requires technical, legal, and 
even statistical expertise, beyond the knowledge of the average citizen. 
This is not a simplification of democratic debate, but rather an 
improper request for judgments on purely disciplinary issues.
It has been clarified from many quarters that the eventual approval of 
the questions will not impact either the rules of civil or criminal 
proceedings, and will not result in any reduction in the processing time 
of justice. Thus, the most immediately understandable and sensitive 
issue for public opinion: the efficiency of the judicial system, is also 
lost.
Nevertheless, voters are expected to understand the structure, 
functions, and operating mechanisms of the Superior Council of the 
Judiciary and even be able to formulate forecasts on the role of 
associative currents after the reform. Furthermore, citizens should know 
that the CSM evaluates the professionalism and competence of magistrates 
based on their opinions of the territorial judicial councils, bodies in 
which decision-making power is reserved exclusively to the magistrates 
themselves. As if that weren't enough, voters are called upon to 
undertake a further task: equipping themselves with tools to measure the 
performance of the judiciary. They should thus determine whether the 
current evaluation system is reliable or ineffective. And if they have 
doubts about the system's transparency, they should also be able to 
predict the effects of a different evaluation structure resulting from 
the entry of external stakeholders. This exercise requires skills far 
beyond those normally required of those voting in a referendum. Equally 
complex is the question of the separation of careers between judging and 
prosecuting magistrates. This distinction is far from intuitive and 
presupposes knowledge of the current rules, including those introduced 
by the Cartabia reform. This reform already limits changes in function 
to only once in a career. Here too, familiarity with statistical data is 
required-in 2024, changes in function affected just over 0.4% of 
magistrates-to understand the proposal's true impact on the 
administration of justice. The question regarding Limits to pre-trial 
detention, seemingly the simplest, actually raise numerous questions for 
those unfamiliar with criminal proceedings: what is pre-trial detention, 
when is it applied, and how long does it last? This issue is expected to 
capture public attention, as it is linked to prison overcrowding, unjust 
detention, and the economic costs borne by the community. The fifth 
question, on the abolition of the 2012 Severino Decree, is certainly the 
clearest in its formulation, but no less complex in its implications. It 
touches on the highly sensitive issue of preventing and repressing 
corruption, one of the most serious forms of violation of the law, 
because it directly affects public administration. According to the 
Corruption Perceptions Index 2024, Italy ranks 52nd globally and 19th 
among the 27 countries of the European Union. In 2025, corruption cases 
doubled compared to the previous year; Libera's dossier "Italy under 
bribes" records, As of December 1, 2025, there were 96 investigations 
and 1,028 people under investigation. Even if citizens aren't familiar 
with these figures in detail, the perception of corruption in the 
country is high. Yet, voters should know that they're not actually 
addressing the original text of the Severino Law, already amended by the 
Cartabia reform in 2023, but rather a further weakened formulation that 
allows
those who have plea bargained sentences of up to two years to run for 
office. Establishing the concrete effects of the abolition of the 
Severino Law is far from simple, especially given that, looking at the 
data, Italy's position in international indices has remained essentially 
unchanged in recent years. Finally, there remains a significant aspect: 
the very formulation of the referendum questions, which appears to be 
constructed more for insiders than for an electorate called upon to 
consciously exercise its sovereignty. In this scenario, the risk lies 
not only in an uninformed vote, but also in a progressive disconnect 
between the instruments of direct democracy and the citizens' genuine 
ability to understand their significance. In this instance, the 
Constitutional Court, in examining the referendum questions, has proven 
itself-to say the least-superficial. It has underestimated the actual 
comprehensibility of the questions. It has failed to consider the 
information asymmetry existing between legislators and ordinary 
citizens, nor has it assessed the actual suitability of the referendum 
instrument to produce a truly informed decision. The issue, therefore, 
is not this referendum, but rather the model of democracy that is 
becoming standardized in our country. Forms of direct democracy are 
increasingly being used for decisions that, by their very 
nature-complexity of the subject matter, asymmetric information, 
tactical political use, polarizing slogans-make informed choice nearly 
impossible. Citizens do not vote on the merits of reform, but rather aim 
to support the governing majority or minority, thus encouraging direct 
participation as a mere exercise of power. The consequences are serious: 
the hollowing out of participatory processes, the weakening of social 
cohesion, the commodification of politics, and growing distrust of 
institutions, with direct repercussions on democratic stability. Without 
a return to the ethical dimension of politics and the rebuilding of 
social bonds, the tools of direct democracy will continue to be weapons 
of distraction or simple exercises of top-down power.

Sabrina Barresi

https://www.ucadi.org/2026/03/01/referendum-giustizia-2026-chiede-al-cittadino-cio-che-spetta-al-legislatore/
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