NYT || Italian Court Rejects Prime Minister's Immunity

After deliberating for two days in one of the most tense political climates in the country's recent memory, the 15 judges of Italy's highest court ruled that the law -- which shields Italy's four highest office holders from prosecution while they are in office -- violates the clause in the Italian constitution granting citizens equality under the law.

The ruling was a stunning blow for Mr. Berlusconi, who has been dogged for decades by legal problems surrounding his vast business empire of media and real estate holdings. The ruling reopens his involvement in three cases now in the courts, including one in which Mr. Berlusconi's tax lawyer was found guilty of taking a bribe to protect the prime minister.

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Most Italians have lost track of Mr. Berlusconi's byzantine legal entanglements, which are of a kind that would have probably spelled his political demise in many other countries. In his 15 years in political life, Mr. Berlusconi has repeatedly accused magistrates of left-wing bias and of mounting witch hunts against him. In today's Italy, governed by Machiavellian Realpolitik and lacking an effective leftwing political opposition, neither the judiciary nor the press is perceived as independent, but rather is seen as at the service of political interests.