National courts can be mobilized quickly to block local challenges to foreign bases.

Evidence

Italian courts are notoriously slow. Across Italy, there are around nine million cases awaiting appeal. And yet, in the Dal Molin case, the Berlusconi government appealed the regional court’s ruling directly to Italy’s highest court and won a judgment within forty days. Invoking the secret 1954 bilateral agreement with the United States and a Mussolini-era law from 1924, the justices said the lower court lacked jurisdiction over decisions about a base, since such decisions are essentially a political question. On the basis of the ruling, another Italian court suspended the local referendum four days before the vote. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 933