How to describe the sources
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When one uses a legislative source, the best practice is to offer a complete citation of a given rule, i.e. mentioning, in the order, the data as follows:
1) the kind of juridical document (e.g.: Law, Decree, Ministerial Decree, etc.);
2) the number of the document (i.e. the progressive number given in the year);
3) the date of promulgation;
4) the complete title (if available).
To these data, other ones can be added, which refer to the author and the signatory – the two things do not always coincide – of a text; and the reference of the Official Gazette where the law was published.
For example, the law which is better-known as Gentile Reform – from the name of the Minister of Education Giovanni Gentile who was the signatory and the author (together with Lombardo Radice) – should be better cited as follows: R.D. (= Royal Decree) n. 1054 of 6th May 1923, Ordinamento della istruzione media e dei convitti nazionali (“Organisation of the Middle Educa-tion and National Boarding Schools”). The law was published on the Gazzetta ufficiale of the 2nd June 1923 n° 129.
After the first (complete) citation, the law can be cited in abbreviated form, citing the kind of the act with the initials, the number of the act and the year, as follows: R.D. n. 1054/1923. Here fol-lows a list with the abbreviations (in Italian) to be used in short citations of laws and acts.
The structure of a juridical text can be observed inside the Digital Exhibition La persecuzione degli ebrei in Italia dal 1938 al 1945 attraverso i documenti dell'epoca (Jewish persecution in Italy from 1938 to 1945 in the documents of the time), edited by the CDEC-Centro di Documentazione Ebraica contemporanea (Centre for Contemporary Documentation).
Here one can observe the partial digitization of one of the most important anti-Jewish laws, the Regio Decreto Legge (Royal Law-Decree) n. 1728 of 17th November 1938 (the original comes from the Central State Archive – abbr. in ACS –, series: Raccolta leggi e decreti), which forbade intermarriages and inhibited Jews from managing firms in the national defence, or with more than 99 employees, from owning lands and buildings exceeding some limits, from having non-Jews servants, from working for civilian and military administrations (in the same web site the complete text is available; but about the racial laws see below).
