Italian Constitutional Justice in Global Context

This is the first book ever published in English to provide to an international audience a comprehensive examination of the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC) and its principal lines of jurisprudence, historical origins, current engagement with transnational European law, organization, and procedures. In global constitutional dialog, the voice of the ItCC has been entirely absent due to a relative lack of English translations both of its decisions and of its focused scholarly commentary. The ItCC represents one of the strongest and most successful examples of constitutional judicial review, and is distinctive in its structure, institutional dimensions, and well-developed jurisprudence, and has developed a unique voice among global constitutional actors in weighing in on a broad range of topics from fundamental rights and liberties to the allocations of governmental power and regionalism. The goal of this book is to elevate Italian constitutional jurisprudence into an active participant role in global constitutional discourse. The authors have carefully structured the work to allow the ItCC’s own “voice” to emerge; present broad syntheses of major areas of the Court’s case law; provide excerpts from notable decisions in a narrative and analytical context; address the tension between the ItCC and the Court of Cassation; and situate the development, character, and importance of the ItCC’s jurisprudence in the larger arc of global judicial on a global scale.