Mattarella to magistrates: "No power is immune from controls. Be irreproachable also on social media"

The exercise of justice is "entrusted by the Constitution to the judiciary. Our Constitution, farsighted, pursues the objective of maintaining the balance between the various organs of the state: no power is immune from constraints and controls". This was stated by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella , speaking to the ordinary magistrates in training.

"A "rigorous exercise and a sense of responsibility are a necessary consequence" as is the irreproachability of individual behavior", continues the Head of State. "Judges have the duty to appear and be irreproachable and impartial. Moral rigor and high professionalism are the most effective response to instrumental attacks launched to try to weaken the role and function of the jurisdiction and to make tension between institutions inappropriately high". The passage after the latest controversy that saw the Undersecretary of Justice Andrea Delmastro attack the magistrates saying that "they speak like mafiosi".

Mattarella further states: "Popular sovereignty itself is exercised, as we well know, in the forms and within the limits established by the Constitution, as stated in its Article 1".

The Head of State continues: "Belonging to the judicial order requires a high sense of responsibility, on the observance of which the credibility of the judicial function itself depends to a large extent. The rigorous exercise of the sense of responsibility is therefore a necessary aspect of independence and autonomy, which requires professional qualification, punctual respect for ethics, irreproachability of individual behavior. Also in the use of social media, with the awareness that, in cases in which the behavior of a magistrate is well-foundedly questioned, the credibility of the judiciary may be compromised".

"The condition of legitimacy of the judicial order lies first of all in the trust that citizens have in justice - states Mattarella -. This trust should not be confused with popular consensus on its decisions. In the trial, the ascertainment of facts and the affirmation of law must occur, I repeat, without undergoing any influence or seeking external approval. For this reason too, it is necessary that judicial measures be correctly motivated".

According to the President of the Republic, justice, "assigned to the judiciary, constitutes the expression of knowledge that is not limited to technical-legal data and, consequently, could never be entrusted to artificial intelligence systems".