The renewal of the Constitutional Court is a central episode in the institutional life of our democracy, and it is logical that it should arouse the interest of the media and citizens. Something similar is happening in other countries where, in view of the importance of the decision, jurists and political scientists have publicly reflected on the subject of the judge required for such a high function.

Since 1956, a Commission of the American cafeteria Association (ABA) has been evaluating candidates for the Supreme Court of the United States on the basis of three criteria that, in my opinion, summarize the virtues that must preside over the exercise of the supreme constitutional jurisdiction: skill professional, judicial character or temperament and integrity staff. We are not dealing with purely technical criteria, but with "human" criteria in a broader sense, and discernible, mainly, according to the auctoritas of the candidate before the community and, in particular, to its recognition among jurists. It is obvious that none of these three requirements - nor the "recognized skill" referred to in article 159.2 EC - can be strictly measured, which does not mean that they are completely subjective parameters. The broad recognition of the role played by the ABA is a good example of this test .

What, of course, cannot be asked of the candidates - as is so often claimed - is that they have no ideology, nor that this does not influence their decisions in any way. The political relevance of the laws whose constitutionality they have to examine, together with the abstraction of the norms that serve them to issue their judgment, prevents them from totally subtracting their sentences from ethical and political evaluations. And it is precisely this political relevance of their decisions that justifies the fact that those who elect the magistrates are high State institutions, connected, more or less directly, with the source of democratic legitimacy. This is the case in most constitutional regimes.

Independence does not consist, therefore, in the absence of ideology, nor in the fact that it does not coincide at all with that of the manager of the appointment. The self-interested inducement to confuse ideology with dependence is a disservice to democracy. Independence resides in acting with one's own judgment, completely detached from the will and pressures of others. In order to break this link, the architect of the American "appointment process", Alexander Hamilton, defended the life mandate as the greatest guarantee of the Court's independence. History has shown that this also has its drawbacks, and the "ad vitam" appointment may be excessive. However, the extension of terms of office to quasi-lifetime ages would probably be a wise step. The great jurist Alexander Bickel summed up the reason for this with an apt simile: "When you appoint a judge, you cast an arrow into the distant future. And not even the nominee himself can tell you what he will eventually think about some of the problems he will have to face."