The National Association of Magistrates protests for the exclusion of judicial categories from the priorities set for vaccination. In fact, the new guidelines contained in the latest decree cancel the rule present in the guidelines approved by Parliament in December last year, which considered the courts, together with schools, essential public services that had to be guaranteed by vaccinating employees. The alarm is justified, the almost threatening tone a little less. The president of the magistrates’ union, Giuseppe Santalucia, speaks of “a strong stance”, but the invitation to the managers of the judicial offices to adopt “to protect health, vigorous organizational measures in order to immediately slow down all the activities of the respective offices, without excluding, in the most extreme cases , even the suspension of judicial activity ”is much more than a stance. The judiciary tends to resolve the issue with their own decisions, instead of asking Parliament and the government to intervene by exercising their constitutional powers. It is an ancient vice to confuse autonomy with a kind of extraterritorial and extra-constitutional self-government.
Having said that, one cannot avoid being surprised by the fact that such a delicate issue has not found expression in the political dialectic: Parliament has seen a change in a priority scale in the vaccinations that it had approved without even asking the government to justify it. That the service of justice is an essential service is not in question, that the acceleration of judicial activities is not a commitment of the government either. So, probably, a mistake has been made, on which the ANM has every right to complain and protest, a little less to invite the managers of the offices to obey the union and not the government.