Across boundaries: the English justice of the peace on the Continent

The English justice de la pees, an official endowed, since the 14th century, with jurisdictional powers, served as a model for the French post-revolutionary juge de paix. The juge de paix jurisdiction was limited to minor criminal and civil cases, simplified in procedure, rapid and cheap: such a magistrate had to act as the good pater familias, whose main purpose was reconciling litigants. The French model was imported into the Italian area through the extension of the Code de procédure civile first to the Reign of Italy, then to the Reign of Naples. The abolition of the Ancien Régime local courts, the reform of criminal procedure and the introduction of the giudice di pace in the Neapolitan Reign was a consequence of the modernization of jurisdiction and rationalization of police wanted by the French: the new “popular” judge, endowed with a wide competence both in criminal and civil cases, together with conciliatory functions, was to take the place of the previous multitude of local judges. The Borbone Restoration changed things again, as the giudice di pace was replaced by the conciliatore, a magistrate endowed with jurisdictional and conciliatory powers in the civil matter only, destined to be inherited by the Italian post-Unity legal system and recently replaced, once more, by the giudice di pace in 1993. The paper aims to explore the relationship and connections between the Italian giudice di pace/conciliatore, the French juge de paix and the English justice of the peace. How much of the English model outlived its “transplant” on the Continent? Why the Continental myth of the justice of the peace, − in France a magistrate with (mostly) conciliatory powers, in the Neapolitan Reign a judge with wide criminal and police competences, after the Italian Unity a magistrate with civil jurisdictional powers only – was destined to re-emerge from time to time in Europe