Justice of Liberation. A Study of the Forms of Justice Carried Out in Northern Italy during the Insurrection

The article analyzes the judiciary forms and practices carried out during the insurrection at the end of World War II in Italy; it aims to study this phenomenon as a catharsis (also with pedagogic meaning) for combatants, citizens and community and also as instruments for drawing violence and subversion. Starting from a reflection on summary judgements, violence and arbitrary forms of justice typical of insurrectional and post-insurrectional periods, the article studies the organisms with formal structure that were organized and designed with forms and methods referred to tribunal and trial. The judicial forms established in northern Italy and administered by the National Liberation Committees and by the partisan army are examined from the period of the insurrection to the establishment of the Corti d’Assise straordinarie (Special Courts of Assizes); this context shows the roles and actions of the protagonists and practice of reckoning with Fascists and the reconstruction of legacy through trials. In those weeks partisans’ tribunals, people tribunals, factory tribunals, epuration committees and other ephemeral subjects judged Nazi ad Fascist military, spies and people who had been compromised with Germans in 1943-1945. It was a complex phenomenon: law references are often not easy to recognize and the socialpolitical situation was exacerbated by the violence of the conflict and characterized locally by different tensions.

Keywords: Justice, Insurrection, Violence, Trials, Collaborationism, Fascism

Fabio Verardo, Giustizie della Liberazione. Riflessioni sulle forme giudiziarie attuate nell’Italia settentrionale nella fase insurrezionale in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 298/2022, pp 144-170, DOI: 10.3280/IC2022-298012