I wrote last week that being hit in the face during a political rally might be the best thing that’s happened to Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi in many months. His approval rating has since skyrocketed, and now, sympathetic to its wounded leader, the Italian Senate has backed a bill that will retroactively put an end to his corruption and tax fraud trials.

If you take a peek at Berlusconi's trial history (a list so extensive that it requires its own Wikipedia page), it's no big secret that the law was drafted by his people as a purely self-serving measure. But when the lower house approves the draft law and a 6 1/2 to 10-year time limit is placed on court trials -- even those already existing -- a much bigger group of Italians will be impacted.

Those who've been unnecessarily held up for longer than a decade in slow, messy trials will be relieved of ongoing legal fees and court time. Because the law will be implemented retroactively, however, it will also render the long-term struggles of plaintiffs null and void. According to the Washington Post, magistrates say that as many as 100,000 trials will soon terminate, leaving thousands of innocent people seeking remuneration in fraud and bankruptcy cases empty-handed.