Abstract

Opening speeches of the judicial year have often been seen only as formal moments, useful to the authorities who take part in them and little else. Actually these speeches are hiding something more important: they are the occasions in which a part of the judiciary expresses its idea of judicial policy to the political world. Three opening speeches mark somehow the story of justice and, above all, the story of the relationship between politics and judiciary in three distinct and important phases: the institutional changes of the early Twentieth century; the consolidation of the Fascist Regime; the transition from Monarchy to Republic. To pronounce the speeches were three general Prosecutors of the "Corte di Cassazione" very different from each other, but all with a great personality, as Lodovico Mortara, Giovanni Appiani and Massimo Pilotti. For this reason it is interesting to analyze them.