Meloni bets on a lottery to curb Italy's judicial clans

Italy has tried random selection before. Ancient Romans used to cast lots to decide who governed in distant provinces while Renaissance Florence pulled names from bags to avoid powerful families gaining a stranglehold on power. Now Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is looking to revive the centuries-old tradition of "sortition" as a way to stop what she says are political factions lording it over Italy's long-troubled judiciary. The plan to select magistrate members of judicial governing councils by lottery lies at the ⁠heart of a reform being put to referendum on March 22-23, pitting Meloni's conservative government against most of the nation's judges and prosecutors.

Recent opinion polls show the "no" camp, backed by the main opposition centre-left parties, has nudged ahead, threatening one of Meloni's signature initiatives which was championed by her predecessor Silvio Berlusconi before his death in 2023. Berlusconi, who faced dozens of trials largely tied to his media empire after entering politics, accused the judiciary of being in the hands of the left. Magistrates denied this, but Meloni vowed to take up his crusade after she won power in 2022.

"I think change is needed because justice is one of the three fundamental powers that keep Italy afloat, but it's also the one that we haven't managed to substantially reform since the ⁠1980s," Meloni told RTL radio last week.

"If we don't succeed this time, we won't have another chance," she added, saying future governments would be unlikely to take on this sort of constitutional reform that almost always requires a referendum that is hard to win in a divided country.

The referendum campaign is unfolding amid growing distrust between the judiciary and the ruling coalition, with "no" supporters arguing that Meloni's plan would undermine the justice system and boost political interference. They seized on remarks by Giusi Bartolozzi, the justice ministry's chief of staff, who urged voters in a TV interview this week to back the reform, saying it would allow Italians to "get rid of a judiciary that acts like a firing squad."

The government's reform has three main pillars.

First, it would separate the career paths of judges and public prosecutors, who currently enter through the same exam, can swap job roles and are governed by a single council (the CSM), which oversees appointments and promotions.

Second, it would split the CSM into two councils - one for judges and one for prosecutors. Third, it would create a new disciplinary court to handle misconduct cases.

Under the proposal for the new-look CSMs, two thirds of seats would be reserved for working judges or prosecutors, and one third for lay ⁠members, such as law professors or lawyers, whose names would be put forward by parliament.

All CSM members will ultimately be drawn by lot. Meloni says this will prevent the sort of wheeler-dealing between various internal factions that recent scandals have revealed, and create a system in which council members do not have to "say thank you to anyone" after an election.

Critics counter that in institutions designed to safeguard independence, legitimacy comes from having leaders chosen on purpose, not picked at random. "It is one thing to punish individuals who make mistakes; it is another to humiliate the entire judiciary by saying that you are not capable of electing your own representatives," said David Ermini, a former vice president of the CSM and an ex-lawmaker with the centre-left Democratic Party.

No one looms over this debate quite like Luca Palamara, a former CSM member whose spectacular downfall spurred the reform. Wiretaps in 2019 exposed late-night meetings involving Palamara, senior judicial figures and politicians, with discussions focused on steering appointments — especially to coveted and sensitive prosecutor posts. Careers were clearly being fixed by cliques and Palamara was expelled from the magistracy.

Now, in a twist that infuriates ⁠many of his former colleagues, Palamara is campaigning for a "Yes" vote. "The introduction of random selection would dismantle the possibility of pre-selecting who sits on the CSM, thereby eliminating factional ties," he said, calling the reform "the one most feared" by those within the factions.

Some opponents say the proposed new selection rules risk promoting people who are ill-prepared or under-qualified, sweeping away any notion of merit and leaving everything up to chance. But Palamara said these concerns were overblown. "We are ⁠talking about people who have passed a highly competitive public examination to enter the profession and who make extremely serious decisions every day — life sentences, delicate family situations," he said. But even if the reform passes the referendum hurdle, history suggests that sortition may not achieve the desired result. In both ancient Rome and Renaissance Florence, lotteries promised fair rotation in theory, but in practice elites learned to game the system, steering outcomes so that the biggest prizes still tended to land in familiar hands. "The mechanism ⁠of factionism would not end with drawing lots. Everyone selected might all come from the same faction," said Ermini.

Meanwhile, ⁠Meloni on Wednesday delivered her strongest criticism yet of the US-Israeli war on Iran, describing it as part of a growing and dangerous trend of interventions "outside the scope of international law". Her remarks to parliament came after repeated accusations from the opposition that her right-wing government had been too soft toward its allies. Most other ⁠European nations, with the notable exception of Spain, have withheld direct critique of the US and Israeli attacks, largely calling for restraint.