Elites, democracy, and parties in the Italian Constituent debates, 1946–1947

Discussions of the role and legitimacy of elites in democratic societies have rarely taken the shape of debates about the internal organization and working of political parties. Except for Michels and Ostrogorski, the party has not received much attention from theorists interested in the elitist dimensions of democratic politics. In this article, I purport to look at the party as a battling ground for competing accounts of the role elites should play in modern democratic societies. However, I will not focus on theoretical analyses of the party. Rather, I will look at how political actors discussed the party in the context of the constituent debates at the Italian Constituent Assembly of 1946–1947. These debates do not explicitly deal with the role elites should play in democratic society. Instead, they center on whether and how the constitution should regulate political parties. Yet while discussing details of legal regulation, the constituents offered contrasting understandings of modern democracy, competing accounts of the role of the masses as well as of the elites, and creative attempts to create stable compromises between the two in a changing society. It is through the reconstruction of these rather practical debates that I aim to uncover how one of the main questions of modern democracy—the relation between elites and masses—has been dealt with politically. This, I suggest, is not only interesting for political or historiographical reasons, but also has theoretical relevance. Not only it directly speaks to recent debates about partisanship and intraparty deliberation, but it is also by looking at political institutions and the reasoning behind their creation that one can recover complex political thinking.1 This, I believe, is made particularly interesting by the fact that it results from long and complicated processes of negotiation of contrasting values as well as from the translation of political ideals into working institutional structures. Reconstructing these processes of negotiation and translation is what I plan to do in this article

The Common Core of Administrative Laws in Europe: a research agenda

This paper aims at ascertaining whether, despite many differences between European systems of administrative law, there are some connecting elements, or a “common core”, and, if so, whether such ‘connecting elements’ can be formulated in legal terms, as opposed to generic idealities. After a quick introduction, the paper is divided into three parts. Part 2 illustrates the background, in two respects: the transformation of administrative law within European countries and the variety of views about the possibility to compare them. In Part 3, it is argued that there are two main difficulties with traditional approaches to comparative administrative law: the tendency to juxtapose a variety of legal systems, without comparing them, and the excessive emphasis on institutional design. In part 4, the main choices of the research are explained; that is its purpose is that of the advancement of knowledge, as opposed to the attempt to harmonize national laws, the focus on administrative procedure, and the choice of legal systems. Last but not least, there is a combination of a synchronic comparison, based on a ‘factual’ approach which draws on the experience gathered in the context of the ‘Common Core of European private law’, with a diachronic comparison; that is, a retrospective that sheds light on some aspects of history of legal institutions that look particularly relevant for understanding the processes of cross-fertilization

Conversations with Justices Aharon Barak, Sabino Cassese, and Dieter Grimm

In the symposium that follows, we present interviews with three of the most important jurists of our time: Aharon Barak (born in 1936), President of the Israel Supreme Court (1995-2006); Sabino Cassese (born in 1935), Justice of the Italian Constitutional Court (2005-2014); and Dieter Grimm (born in 1937), Justice of the German Federal Constitutional Court (1987 to 1999)

Legitimacy and accountability in Italian administrative law: a critical analysis

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF LEGITIMACY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE ITALIAN LEGAL ORDE

Transnational public law in Europe: beyond the “lex alius loci”

This article argues that public law – in the European legal space – is not a national enclave. Two cases are examined over time: the Algera case before the European Court of Justice and a ruling of an Italian administrative court, the Tribunale di giustizia amministrativa di Trento. While Algera is a dispute that occurred in the 1950s within the first phase of integration, that of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the other case was decided only a few years ago. In both cases, the judge came to the conclusion that the initial measure taken by the administrative authority was unlawful and that, therefore, it had to be withdrawn. But what matters more, for our purposes, is that both courts ‘found’ the relevant norms governing the exercise of administrative power beyond their own legal system

The genesis and structure of general principles of global public law

Si tratta degli atti della ricerca PRIN (coordinatore nazionale Bernardo Mattarella) sul diritto globale, per la quale ho diretto l'unità di ricerca napoletan