Gabrio Forti

Il volume raccoglie un'ampia riflessione a più voci sul fenomeno del riciclaggio e i suoi stretti e molteplici piani di inters

ABSTRACT: Italian criminal law of corporations has undergone in 2002 a large reform which poses serious problems as to its compatibility with principles of justice and economic democracy. Despite the “liberal” attitudes overtly voiced at the time of its inception, it contradicts one of the main features of a developed, not merely traditional, sort of liberalism, namely the awareness of the strict need to survey and check power (especially economic, fi nancial and industrial power) in its tendency to be opaquely concentrated in few hands. First and foremost in any consideration of public justice should be the equality in the distribution of relevant knowledges. As criminologists well know, white collar crime thrives in the dark but darkness in turn makes legal business and institutions blind to illegality and criminality. Contemporary criminal law scholars can no more afford to neglect how the wider cultural, institutional and economic environments, which encompass the scope of their professional decisions, is apt to defi ne also the “justice” thereof, especially when criminal law impinges on economic relations and therefore on the conditions (not rarely themselves worth a criminal law’s protection) of an adequate knowledge distribution among stakeholders and common citizens. KEY WORDS: theory of justice, criminal law, economic regulation, corporate crimes, white collars SOMMARIO: 0. In ricordo di Armando Bartulli – 1. Il liberalismo come «arte della separazione» – 2. Diritto penale dell’economia e «giustizia di sfondo». Il diritto penale «degno di fi ducia» – 3. La distribuzione «giusta» delle informazioni tra gli attori sociali – 4. Disciplina penale-societaria e condizioni di una democrazia economica.

A definition of human dignity is extremely difficult and controversial to achieve. However for the criminal lawyer such a task should be somewhat alleviated by the «light» of a kind of «truth» stemming from prisons, namely from an environment where dignity is put under extreme stress and a tight bundle of principles have been devised in order to keep inhumanity constantly under check. Such hints arising out of penitentary law and experience suggest a widening of the role of criminal law in bolstering human dignity well beyond the protection of a mere kantian idea of dignity, however paramount its consideration it may be, as expressed in the Italian and German constitutional judicature (e.g. in the Bundesverfassungsgericht decision on the use of force against plane hijackings) and in the condemnation of any kind of torture. Scope and aim of criminal law in this field should be more far-reaching and encompass a protection against the many lacks of empowerment suffered by human beings even in the most advanced western societies (epitomized and symbolized by the feeblenesses of people living in prisons), including those arising from epistemic injustices, which put some of the major hindrances to human development and rights.

The essay is intended as a kind of meta-analysis, from a mainly criminal law perspective, of laicism and mutual tolerance principles in latemodern societies, getting beyond the formal approach to these themes, which has traditionally been focused solely on the legal guarantee of an outward respect by States and among citizens for minority faiths and beliefs. Liberal democracies, made aware of the need – stemming also, ad J. Habermas puts it, by and «aberrant modernization» – to draw upon different religious and moral beliefs in order to preserve their same normative and cultural foundations, should then bolster up the «potential for truth» of citizens and thus foster a widespread «interest in truth» rather than the idea of people sharing unique identities. A task which, in turn, requires as prerequisite equality of rights, enhancement of human capabilities and social cooperation. Such active social policy involvement even by liberal States has become more and more urgent in view of the recent drift of criminal laws towards «zero tolerance» and «enemy oriented» policies, which, besides being both the effect and a major further cause of the weakening of vital social bonds, are hardly contained solely by the liberal rule of law and rather pose a powerful threat to a credible maintenance thereof.

È sotto gli occhi di tutti il grave deperimento della politica nel nostro Paese. Il fenomeno, di dimensioni trasversali, ha la sua radice in una logica faziosa, incurante di quel riferimento al bene comune (categoria chiave della Dottrina sociale della Chiesa) che trascende le singole parti e che è presupposto indispensabile della convivenza civile e della dialettica politica. La riflessione condotta da Gabrio Forti (docente di Diritto penale e Criminologia all’Università Cattolica di Milano) mette in luce il valore essenziale delle istituzioni e della loro indipendenza, e insieme le insidie a cui esse sono oggi esposte. Sullo sfondo si coglie il rischio di un’invasività totalizzante del potere politico e di una conflittualità patologica che tende a lacerare e logorare il Paese.

Il libro presenta e discute un’imponente ricerca criminologica, psicologica e mediologica sulla rappresentazione televisiva e giornalistica del crimine in Italia, raccogliendo le voci di alcuni tra i massimi esperti mondiali della materia, oltre che di autorevoli giornalisti, chiamati a commentare i risultati dell’analisi svolta sulle loro testate.