La extensión del sistema judicial de Saboya a las provincias napolitanas en la “misión unificadora”

The essay focuses on a significant moment in the process of the legislative unification of the Kingdom of Italy: that of the extension to the Neapolitan provinces of the penal codes and, in particular, of the judicial system set up by Urbano Rattazzi in 1859 for the Kingdom of Sardinia. The choice of a judicial system that stiffened the governmental mechanisms of control of the judiciary, proving to be among the most backward systems in force at the time, contributed to making the question of the judiciary’s independence a crucial constitutional problem in the legal history of the Italian State. At the time, the idea of extending the Piedmontese judicial system to the annexed provinces was dictated in part by the haste to complete unification, and in part by the tendency manifested in Turin to direct it according to a rigid centralism. In the background of this affair, however, the role and responsibility of those southern exiles, mostly talented jurists, who were entrusted with this by the Piedmontese government should not be overlooked. Tenacious supporters of the Savoia’s moralising work in the unitarist mission entrusted to them, they were unable to seize, for various reasons, the opportunity to start a thoughtful and constructive debate on the issue of the independence and autonomy of judges, recovering an important legal tradition, such as that of the south, and involving the best and intellectually honest part of southern society.