Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 2 - Maio/Agosto - 2019

 R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 2, p. 11-39, Maio-Agosto, 2019  38 compliance with the Constitution, 109 because the above mentioned Art. 103, para no. 1 Const. states that the Council of State and other organs of administrative justice have jurisdiction to protect subjective rights against the public administration, only “in specific matters” indicated by law. Examining the matters devoted to the administrative courts’ “exclusive” subject matter jurisdiction, which are today listed in Art. 133 Code of Administrative Judicial Proceedings, they are anything but specific: disputes about agreements between citizens and public administration amending or replacing administrative measures, the right of access to administrative documents, breach of the duty of transparency, granting of the use of public goods, public services, procurement, urban planning and construction policy, challenging therulings of independent agencies, and so on. Moreover, this trend broadens the scope of the administrative courts’ subject matter jurisdiction, which aggravates the existing problems regarding the composition of the Council of State, as its members nor- mally act also as consultants of the public administration and hold im- portant positions in ministries, such as heads of legislative offices, heads of the ministerial staff, and so on. Italian narratives directed to a foreign readership 110 point out that in Italy “as a result of a wellk nown histori- cal development, administrative courts have affirmed themselves as truly independent bodies, end owed with realcourts’prestige and maintaining fundamental standards of procedural fairness” 111 . This may well be true, although it is somewhat a mystery how the dual role of the Council of State’s members (as both consultants of the government and judges in the disputes between citizens and public administration) is to be reconciled with the requirement of independence. We might recall that legal provi- sions and bodies in charge of ensuring judicial independence differ greatly in the Italian legal system between ordinary and specialized courts, as the independence of the former is ensured by the High Council of the Judi- ciary ( Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura ), while the independence of the latter is regulated by different statutory provisions. 112 109 Certain legal provisions belonging to this trend were indeed invalidated by the Constitutional Court no. 204 of 2004, although its overall reasoning is quite unsatisfactory. 110 Cf. M. De Cristofaro, N. Trocker (eds.), Civil Justice in Italy, p. 19. 111 Now codified by the Decreto legislativo, 2 July 2010, no. 104, Code of Administrative Judicial Proceedings. 112 Cf. Art. 108, para 2 Const. As to this kind of statutory provisions, consider for example Law no. 186 of 1982.