Brescia, story of Giuseppe Frigo, lawyer and judge

Brescia, Giuseppe Frigo died in Brescia on 7 December 2019, at the age of 84. Lawyer, criminalist and jurist, he was a judge of the Court constitutional from 2008 to 2016, a position he left due to health problems. Professor of comparative and European criminal procedural law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Brescia, which he followed from birth, Giuseppe Frigo graduated with honors in law in 1957 from the University of Pavia. From 1998 to 2002 he was also President of the Union of Italian Criminal Chambers, an organization which is associated with 126 Criminal Chambers distributed throughout the national territory, with a total number of approximately eight thousand registered criminal lawyers. Giuseppe Frigo led this body by virtue of a cultural identity, that of a criminal lawyer, which in him was not limited to a coherent theory of only legal and ethical principles. In him that cultural identity went beyond the law and the exercise of the profession, to extend to the area of ​​personal sensitivities that presided over the exercise of any of his functions, whether academic, forensic or judicial.
Precisely this cultural humus was continuously nourished by Giuseppe Frigo in every moment of his intense participation in the civil life of the country: when in 1983 he was called by the Ministry of Justice as a member of the Advisory Commission for the law enabling the reform of the code of ritual ; when in 1989 he founded and was elected First President of the Criminal Chamber of Brescia and then of the Criminal Chamber of Eastern Lombardy; when he took part in the life of the Union (first from 1990 to 1992 as a member of the Council, subsequently from 1992 to 1994 as Vice-President and, again, from September 1998 to September 2002 as President of the Union, working in the latter to obtain the inclusion of the principles of fair trial within the constitutional perimeter); finally when, starting from 21 October 2008, following the 22nd ballot of the Parliament in joint session, he assumed the role of Judge of the Constitutional Court, a role in which in just over eight years he would sign, as rapporteur, well 186 provisions of significant importance in the jurisprudence of the Council (among many, that on the regulation of art. 41-bis of the rules on the Penitentiary System).
Giuseppe Frigo was a point of reference for the world of the Italian judiciary, in the front row in the many battles waged in the name of guaranteeism; his name is also linked to some well-known judicial events, such as the Soffiantini case, and the action carried out for the Prosecutor's Office of Milano before the Constitutional Court in two attribution conflicts in the Clean Hands years, when authorization to proceed against Bettino Craxi and Severino Citaristi was denied. Giuseppe Frigo was then one of the fathers of the inclusion in the Constitution of the principle of fair trial, of equality between prosecution and defence.