At the heart of the phenomenon at this point known as “mass media trial” there is the clash, difficult to overcome, between conflicting rights: on the one side the right of information on criminal matters, and, on the other, the different rights of the people subjected to it (privacy, presumption of innocence), in addition to more general interests to the impartiality of the trial. In this paper we present some restorative measures that should be granted to the people that are subjected to “mass media trial”, both in the case in which they are convicted and in the case in which they are acquitted: in the first case, we suppose in the first place a deserved mitigation of the punishment, that acknowledges the double “legal suffering” endured in the “parallel proceeding” occurred on television and newspapers; in the second case, we advance the introduction of correction obligations that the judge should impose to the media, starting with the obligation to publish the judgment of acquittal, in addition to restorative/ compensatory measures at the expense of the State.
The topic of the problematic relationship between criminal justice and mass media is certainly not only typical of the Italian legal system. In the following paper we try then to look at this topic in a comparative perspective, by analyzing the legal sources, the caselaw and the legal scholarship. The analyses is limited to some key civil law legal system – France, Spain and Germany – and especially to the substantive criminal law aspects, in particular the criminal responsibility of the journalists in cases of violation of the investigative secret and on the criminal restorative measures in cases of “mass media trial”.
The paper is based on the work of the research group led by the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Florence on the topic of "Criminal Justice and Journalistic Activities" and it is aimed at summarizing the main issues related to the many interests involved and their possible balancing. Based on the assumption that it is necessary to overcome the contradiction between the existing, but totally ineffective, laws and a situation of pain for many interests, especially private ones, attempts are made to identify some possible lines in order to reform or to rethink the system.
This article deals with the limits to terroristic hatespeech - in particular, the glorification of Islamic terrorism and incitement to jihad - in the Italian legal system. More precisely, the author describes how, in the case of public terroristic hate-speech, the balance between freedom of speech and prevention of terrorism is struck in criminal law and immigration law, underpinning, on the one side, the divergent assessment of the danger to the public order and state security for a person to be either criminally prosecuted or expelled; while on the other side, underpinning the divergent enjoyment of the right to a fair trial in case of, respectively, criminal prosecutions for public incitement to terrorism and administrative expulsion for terrorism prevention purposes.
The measures developed at the supranational level in order to adequately respond to evolving terrorist threats impose, among other things, the punishability of public provocation and incitement to commit terrorist offenses. However, while there is a legitimate need to fight the acts of proselytism proliferating in some places of worship by means of certain preachers and by way of the internet and social media, increasingly becoming the main channels used by terrorists to spread propaganda, it is likely to affect the constitutionally and conventionally recognized freedom of speech. Therefore, given a possible expansion of the ambit of the criminal action, it is paramount to identify what the tolerable limit of flexibility of such a fundamental right is, in the name of collective security
La previsione (nella proposta approvata in prima lettura dal Senato) del negazionismo come circostanza aggravante del reato di cui all’art. 3 della c.d. legge Mancino, non comporta un’estensione dell’area dell’illecito penale. Sul terreno penalistico è priva di utilità, ma non presenta i rischi connaturati a un’incriminazione autonoma. Risponde a ragioni di opportunità politica: chiuderebbe il problema di dare attuazione alla direttiva quadro europea, e trasmette un messaggio di impegno politico contro l’antisemitismo.