Italian Constitutional Justice in Global Context is the first book ever published in English to provide an international examination of the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC), offering a comprehensive analysis of its principal lines of jurisprudence, historical origins, organization, procedures, and its current engagement with transnational European law. 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. Moreover, the ItCC has developed a distinctive voice among global constitutional actors in its adjudication of a broad range of topics from fundamental rights and liberties to the allocations of governmental power and regionalism. Nevertheless, in global constitutional dialog, the voice of the ItCC has been almost entirely absent due to a relative lack of both English translations of its decisions and of focused scholarly commentary in English. This book describes the "Italian Style" in global constitutional adjudication, and aims to elevate Italian constitutional jurisprudence to an active participant role in global constitutional discourse. The authors have carefully structured the work to allow the ItCC's own voice to emerge. It presents broad syntheses of major areas of the Court's case law, provides excerpts from notable decisions in a narrative and analytical context, addresses the tension between the ItCC and the Court of Cassation, and positions the development, character, and importance of the ItCC's jurisprudence in the larger arc of global judicial dialog.

This volume examines the relationship between central government and local institutions, taking Italy as a case study to present a comparative perspective on how the Italian experience has influenced the global developments of federal and regional states. As the country with the longest standing regional system, Italy has a lot to tell countries that are dealing with similar issues in present times. Adopting a theoretical/analytical approach coupled with comparative analysis, this volume critically reflects on the changes brought to the Italian system of government by the reform of Title V of the Italian constitution, the reasons why further decentralisation has been resisted and offers a comparative overview of the place and contributions that the Italian experience has brought to the global debate on regionalism and federalism. The book is divided into two parts: Part I distils the essence of the evolution of Italian regionalism and the respective debate before and after 2001. While focusing on Italy, the various chapters situate it within the global framework of discussion. Part II reflects on how the Italian regional constitutional architecture contributes to the global debate, particularly focusing on the main innovations brought about by constitutional reform. The book will be essential reading for researchers, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of constitutional law and politics, and federalism. Chapters 5 and 8 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003104469

A robust defense of democratic populism by one of America’s most renowned and controversial constitutional scholars—the award-winning author of We the People. Populism is a threat to the democratic world, fuel for demagogues and reactionary crowds—or so its critics would have us believe. But in his award-winning trilogy We the People, Bruce Ackerman showed that Americans have repeatedly rejected this view. Now he draws on a quarter century of scholarship in this essential and surprising inquiry into the origins, successes, and threats to revolutionary constitutionalism around the world. He takes us to India, South Africa, Italy, France, Poland, Burma, Israel, and Iran and provides a blow-by-blow account of the tribulations that confronted popular movements in their insurgent campaigns for constitutional democracy. Despite their many differences, populist leaders such as Nehru, Mandela, and de Gaulle encountered similar dilemmas at critical turning points, and each managed something overlooked but essential. Rather than deploy their charismatic leadership to retain power, they instead used it to confer legitimacy to the citizens and institutions of constitutional democracy. Ackerman returns to the United States in his last chapter to provide new insights into the Founders’ acts of constitutional statesmanship as they met very similar challenges to those confronting populist leaders today. In the age of Trump, the democratic system of checks and balances will not survive unless ordinary citizens rally to its defense. Revolutionary Constitutions shows how activists can learn from their predecessors’ successes and profit from their mistakes, and sets up Ackerman’s next volume, which will address how elites and insiders co-opt and destroy the momentum of revolutionary movements.

This book introduces the reader to the Italian Constitution, which entered into force on 1 January 1948, and examines whether it has successfully managed the political and legal challenges that have occurred since its inception, and fulfilled the three main functions of a Constitution: maintaining a community, protecting the fundamental rights of citizens and ensuring the separation of powers.

This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or ‘twilight’ of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project ‘The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance’. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution tells the forgotten, untold story of the origins of U.S. law. Before the Revolutionary War, a 26-year-old Italian thinker, Cesare Beccaria, published On Crimes and Punishments, a runaway bestseller that shaped the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and early American laws. America's Founding Fathers, including early U.S. Presidents, avidly read Beccaria's book--a product of the Italian Enlightenment that argued against tyranny and the death penalty. Beccaria's book shaped American views on everything from free speech to republicanism, to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," to gun ownership and the founders' understanding of "cruel and unusual punishments," the famous phrase in the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment. In opposing torture and infamy, Beccaria inspired America's founders to jettison England's Bloody Code, heavily reliant on executions and corporal punishments, and to adopt the penitentiary system. The cast of characters in The Birth of American Law includes the usual suspects--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison. But it also includes the now little-remembered Count Luigi Castiglioni, a botanist from Milan who--decades before Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America--toured all thirteen original American states before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Also figuring in this dramatic story of the American Revolution: Madison's Princeton classmate William Bradford, an early U.S. Attorney General and Beccaria devotee; John Dickinson, the "Penman of the Revolution" who wrote of Beccaria's "genius" and "masterly hand"; James Wilson and Dr. Benjamin Rush, signers of the Declaration of Independence and fellow Beccaria admirers; and Philip Mazzei, Jefferson's Italian-American neighbor at Monticello and yet another Beccaria enthusiast. In documenting Beccaria's game-changing influence, The Birth of American Law sheds important new light on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the creation of American law. This book is part of the Legal History Series, edited by H. Jefferson Powell, Duke University School of Law. The Birth of American Law was awarded the 2015 Scribes Book Award and the First Prize in the 2015 AAIS Book Award competition (in the 18th/19th century category). It was also named INDIEFAB's 2014 Gold Winner for History!