ABSTRACT
This chapter critically evaluates the amnesty law. In order to do so, three different perspectives are applied: the one of criminal lawyers, the one of historians and that of the transitional justice scholarship and jurisprudence in relation to amnesty laws. It will be seen that the Togliatti amnesty would positively bear extrinsic scrutiny, that is, relative to the compatibility of the purpose with the guiding constitutional goals of the criminal law system and with the principle of equality. The failure is instead to be noted on the front of intrinsic scrutiny, i.e. of its purpose-rationality. On some points, the responsibility of the judiciary is irrefutable, while elsewhere the responsibility of the legislator is clear. While analysing the Italian experience in light of transitional justice profiles, it will be pointed out that this amnesty, in itself, only partially renounced criminal prosecution and it can be positioned halfway between compromise amnesties and accountable amnesties. However, the combination of the technical-legal imperfections of the text with some de facto elements (primarily the activism of the judiciary) transformed it into a vector of impunity.
