Ufficio Per il Processo and Honorary Justice of the Peace in Italy

The presentation deals with the “Office for the Trial” in Italy, which consists in organizational structures - introduced by Law Decree No. 90/2014 - aimed at ensuring the reasonable duration of the trial, through innovation of organizational models and ensuring a more efficient use of information and communication technologies. The paper, after illustrating the functions of the Honorary Justices of the Peace assigned to the “Office for the Trial”, focuses on the possibility for the professional judge to delegate the exercise of judicial functions to the Honorary Justices of the Peace through a provision that hardly seems compatible with the constitutional principle of the independence of the judge