Definition - General aspects
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The study of juridical sources represents for historians an extraordinary tool for the research, since the juridical texts are firmly linked with the social reality (as clearly highlighted by the so-called institutional theory, in Italy “istituzionalismo”, according to which the social environment shapes the values reproduced into the law)1. Therefore studying these texts, especially in their chronological sequence, allows us to deeply explore the cultural, political and social climate from which those texts originated.
In order to understand their value, we should reckon the juridical texts’ typologies. In general, rules can be organized according to a hierarchical order (see, in Italian, the article “Gerarchia delle fonti del diritto” by Franco Modugno)2 i.e. on the base of their independent, primary and fundamental character or, by opposite, of their derived and subordinate nature; from this descents the “strength” of laws, in the meaning of capacity of modifying the legal order (the body of laws regulating the community’s life).
In Republican Italy the first source is the Constitution, i.e. the fundamental law of the State; lower, but always among the sources of “first level” (i.e. constitutional sources) there are the constitutional laws (which integrate or modify the Constitution)3.
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The Italian Constitution was published in the Official Gazette («Gazzetta Ufficiale») n. 298, extraordinary edition of 27th December 1947, and came into force on 1st January.
The original text is accessible in the Italian free digital library Liber Liber. The text in force is available in the web site of the Presidency of the Italian Repubblic as well as in the Senate – where one can download the .pdf file of the French transla-tion (Costitution de la République Italienne) and English translation (Constitution of the Italian Republic). See also the e-book: Meuccio Ruini, Come si è formata la costituzione, Milano, Giuffré, 1961 (web site of the publisher Giuffré).
1 See also the definition of institutional theory in the data-base Theories Used in Research by the University of York.
2 The web site Il diritto di tutti, edited by the Italian publisher Giuffrè, offers an interesting juridical on line encyclopedia.
3 About the Constitution and Constitutional Laws, see also the Didactical Platform about the Italian Constitution, edited by the web site of the Italian Government.
