Since political violence entails illegality, the judiciary always constitutes a major forum for interpretation and response. Attempts to disrupt or disable the legal system have therefore often been a significant part of the strategy of insurgent violence. Symbolically, by showing that their actions cannot be processed through the categories and procedures for assessing ordinary crime, armed groups have hoped to force public recognition of the distinctive status of their methods and to extract an explicit conferral of political meaning for their violence and identities. In addition the frustration of judicial investigations and the exploitation of ambiguous or contradictory features of legal processes can lead not just to pragmatic impunity for the users of violence but also to propaganda advantages deriving from the public demonstration of the State’s apparent inability to sanction their activities according to its own rules. In Italy the judiciary paid a high price for that strategy. Between 1974 and 1980 ten magistrates were murdered (two being the responsibility of right-wing groups), three were wounded and three kidnapped; and the magistrates directly involved in investigating political violence were forced into deeply constricting modifications to their working and personal lives by the need for protection. Beyond their role as victims, however, magistrates and judges played a crucial part in both the management of violence and the creation and diffusion of knowledge about it.1