Recent judgments

2018  |  2017  |  2016  |  2015  |  2014  |  2013  |  2012  |  2011  |  2010  |  2009  |  2008  |  2007  |  2006  |  1995
 Judgment No. 196 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President, Silvana SCIARRA, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court heard a referral order from the Court of Auditors challenging regional legislation on the creation of a special category of civil service director, and the reallocation of budgetary resources in order to pay such staff. The Court reasserted the standing of the Court of Auditors to challenge the constitutionality of legislation within budgetary compliance procedures. The Court upheld the questions, ruling the legislation unconstitutional, finding that the region had acted ultra vires in establishing a new special category of civil service director, and in reallocating spending in order to remunerate such staff. Specifically, the Court held that legislative competence in this area lay with the state, as a matter falling under private law (over which the state has exclusive jurisdiction).


 Judgment No. 194 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Silvana SCIARRA, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court considered a referral order challenging a decree-law on permanent employment contracts with increasing protection over time, which made provision for compensation within fixed bands in the event of unfair dismissal, based solely on the length of service of the dismissed employee. The Court accepted the questions in part, ruling unconstitutional the phrase that automatically tied the amount of compensation to the length of service of the dismissed employee. The Court ruled that, in treating different situations identically, the inflexible criterion violated the principle of equality: "the detriment caused in various cases by unfair dismissal depends upon a variety of factors. Whilst length of service is certainly relevant, it is thus only one of many." The Court also held that the lack of flexibility rendered the mechanism for establishing compensation unreasonable. In addition, the mechanism failed to achieve a balanced settlement between the respective interests of the employer and the employee.


 Judgment No. 183 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Franco MODUGNO, Author of the Judgment
In this case the Court held a jurisdictional dispute concerning regional legislation from Veneto that purported to require national bodies and authorities to display certain regional symbols. The Court held that "the contested legislation encroaches upon the exclusive legislative competence of the state over the 'legal and administrative organisation of the State and of national public bodies'". This is because "the contested provision states that the regional standard must also be displayed on buildings used by state bodies and offices, as well as on buildings and vessels used by national public bodies and entities". It is thus not possible to enact regional legislation requiring state bodies to use any specific regional symbols.


 Judgment No. 180 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President, Giovanni AMOROSO, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court heard a referral order challenging an article of a law relating to the right to strike in relation to essential public services. The concrete case had to do with lawyers striking as part of a collective work stoppage, and missing court hearings pertaining to accused persons being held in preventive custody, prior to a conviction. The Court struck down the law, which asked professional associations to write self-regulatory codes that provided definitions for "indispensible" services and regulated respect for constitutionally protected rights in connection with such services. The Court held that these self-regulatory codes, because they were adopted and approved by a public Commission, amounted to secondary legislation. Since the code in question specified that accused persons being held in preventive custody could consent to continuing with proceedings in the absence of counsel during a work stoppage by their defense attorneys, with a direct impact on the prisoner's personal freedom, the Court held that this violated the broad constitutional reservation to primary legislation to adopt laws intended to protect personal freedom.


 Judgment No. 170 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President, Nicolò ZANON , Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court considered a referral order from the Disciplinary Division of the magistracy, which questioned the constitutionality of a legislative provision making it a disciplinary infraction for magistrates (even those not listed among the judicial staff) to enroll in political parties, or participate in their activities in an "ongoing and systematic" way. The Court acknowledged the magistrates' fundamental right under the constitution to political association and to associate more broadly - a right that may be limited but not eliminated. Then the Court held that the question was unfounded, holding that the legislature had effected a reasonable balancing between the fundamental rights of magistrates and the important value of ensuring the independence and impartiality (and even the appearance thereof) of the magistracy. The Court saw no unreasonable inconsistency between the legislator's choice to make enrollment in political parties, and systematic and ongoing participation in their activities, punishable offenses, while simultaneously permitting magistrates to stand for election and accept political appointments, since enrollment in and consistent participation in the activities of a party may be legitimate indicators of an alliance with a given party sufficient to raise doubts as to the impartiality of a magistrate.


 Judgment No. 166 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Marta CARTABIA, Author of the Judgment
In this case the Court considered a referral order challenging a provision of a Lombardy Assistance Fund for Access to Rental Housing. In addition to State-instituted requirements relating to income bracket and the percentage of income needed to pay requirements that applied only to "immigrants," that is, nationals of countries outside the European Union and stateless persons. The provision required such persons to provide proof of either ten years of residency in the national territory of Italy, or else five years in the territory of Lombardy. The Court struck down the provision, holding that the form of social assistance at issue was, indeed, a social welfare measure chiefly intended to provide assistance to indigents, and that the Lombardy provision unreasonably and disproportionately discriminated against third-country nationals. It found the ten- and five-year residency requirements to be arbitrary, patently unreasonable, and disproportionate, given that ten-year legal residents may request Italian citizenship and that the purpose of the National Fund (to provide temporary assistance in periods of acute financial distress) would be frustrated by a five-year residency threshold. It also held that the provision violated EU obligations by distinguishing between Italian nationals and long-term residents, since EU law both dictates that long-term resident status be granted after five years residence in any EU Member State, and that long-term residents be treated equally to citizens for purposes of social assistance.


 Judgment No. 149 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President, Francesco VIGANO', Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court heard a referral order questioning the constitutionality of legislation that excluded persons who had received life sentences for certain serious offences from eligibility for prison benefits before a rigid cut-off date. This threshold applied irrespective of the engagement of the inmate in re-education, or any cooperation with the judicial authorities. The Court ruled that the legislation was inherently unreasonable in that it rendered an inmate eligible for semi-release before he or she would be eligible for other less far-reaching measures of release from prison (which should logically occur prior to semi-release). In addition, "in depriving the sentence deductions for the purpose of early release of any practical effect until twenty-six years, the contested legislation significantly reduces the incentive for persons who have received a life sentence to participate in re-education". The Court reiterated that the goal of re-education was absolute and "must always be guaranteed, even for the perpetrators of the most serious offences", and that the inmate's progress in the process of re-socialisation must be assessed with reference to his or her individual circumstances, and cannot be subject to blanket exclusions, referring also to ECHR case law.


 Judgment No. 120 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Giancarlo CORAGGIO, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court heard referral orders challenging the constitutionality of legislation that prohibited the establishment of trade unions by members of the armed forces with reference to ECtHR case law and the European Social Charter (ESC). The Court held that the ESC constituted international law for the purposes of Article 117(1) of the Constitution, although that the decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights do not have the same binding status as those of the ECtHR for the purposes of Italian constitutional law, but are merely "authoritative". On the merits, it found that legislation prohibiting trade unions outright was incompatible with the ECHR and the ESC, but that these instruments allowed for the imposition of restrictions in relation to certain special categories, such as the armed forces. Moreover, since Italian constitutional law required the imposition of such limits, the Court instructed the legislature to adopt suitable legislation and ordered that certain provisions regulating military representation bodies that had already been enacted should apply pending the enactment of such legislation.


 Judgment No. 115 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Giorgio LATTANZI, Author of the Judgment
This decision followed a "dialogue between courts," between the European Court of Justice (Court of Justice) and the Italian Constitutional Court (Court), spanning multiple cases. In this case, the Court considered two referral orders challenging a provision Italian law incorporating into the Italian system some provisions of international law from which the Court of Justice, in its preliminary rulings on this and an earlier case, Taricco, had inferred the so-called "Taricco rule." The "Taricco rule" called for Italian courts to disapply certain provisions of Italian law concerning statutes of limitations (or limitations periods) in tax evasion cases involving the value added tax (VAT), where certain conditions were met. The effect of the "Taricco rule" was that some cases which were time-barred under Italian law would still be able to be prosecuted in Italian courts, through the disapplication of the Italian provisions. The present case involved two cases of VAT-related fraud in which the conditions were met for the "Taricco rule" to apply. The Italian Court made a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice, and both courts agreed that, since the defendants were charged with crimes allegedly committed prior tothe date of publication of the Taricco ruling, the "Taricco rule" could not apply under the principle of non-retroactivity of harsher criminal punishments. The Italian Court held, however, that even if the matters were time-barred, the questions raised by the referring courts were not irrelevant. The Court then held that the "Taricco rule" could not, in any case, apply to these cases, nor could it have any place in the Italian legal system because it violated the constitutional principle of legal certainty in criminal matters. Starting from the premise that limitation periods are a part of substantive criminal law in the Italian system, the Court held thatthe rule violated the principal of legal certainty in criminal matters. The Court heldthat the rule was overly vague, in that it applied to offenses impacting an indefinite "considerable number of cases" and required judges to pursue criminal policy objectives. Above all, the rule did not meet the substantive criminal law requirement that individuals be able to foresee the consequences of their actions based on the written law, with judges playing a clarifying role limited by the options that a personmay envision in reading the relevant text. The Court held that the "Taricco rule" was not among the options a person could envision based on a reading of the legal provisions from which it was inferred, and thus, interested persons could not be aware of the legal consequences of their actions by reading the text of the relevant laws. Because the violation of the principle of legal certainty in criminal matters served as an absolute bar on the introduction of the "Taricco rule" into the Italian legal system, the Court held that the Italian legal provisions that would otherwise work to incorporate the rule into the Italian system did not do so, and, therefore, the questions raised by the referring courts were unfounded.


 Judgment No. 88 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President, Aldo CAROSI, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court heard various referral orders from the Court of Cassation challenging legislation which provided that compensation for judicial proceedings of unreasonable length can only be sought after the conclusion of the offending proceedings. Specifically, it was noted that the request directed by the Court to the legislator in Judgment no. 30 of 2014 to rectify the situation by new legislation had been acted upon in a manner that was inadequate. Referring to ECHR case law, the Court ruled the legislation unconstitutional "as the remedies introduced do not apply in all circumstances". The Court thus ruled that the legislation had to be read as permitting actions for compensation to be brought whilst the proceedings in question were still pending.


 Judgment No. 81 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Marca CARTABIA, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court considered a direct application from the President of the Council of Ministers challenging a Venetoregional law classifying the "Veneto people" as a national minority under the international Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The law classified the "Veneto people," including but not limited to the Ladin and Cimbric linguistic minorities, as a national minority; claimed to implement the Framework Convention, established a regional association to field spontaneous claims of membership in the minority, and called on central and peripheral administrations to handle the implementation and expenses of the law. The Court first rejected the intervention of a private association and private individual on the grounds that proceedings in which the Court is seized by direct application may only be carried out between parties with legislative powers. Then, the Court overruled an objection by the defendant Region that there was no injury to give standing in the case, holding that the burdens the law claimed to impose upon the central administration to implement and cover the expenses of the law were real and not merely aspirational, as the defense claimed. Finally, on the merits, the Court found the Applicant's challenge to be well-founded, and struck down the full text of regional law. The Court held that protection of minorities(including linguistic minorities) is a supreme principle of the pluralistic constitutional system, and that both State-level and regional and provincial lawmakers must be involved in actively ensuring the concrete effectiveness of such protection. However, the Court further held that the identification of national minorities mustfall within the exclusive purview of the State legislator, for the assurance of uniformity throughout the nation. Moreover, the Regions may not classify themselves, as such, as "national minorities," which would undermine the unity of the conglomeration of regions within the Republic. The Court did not consider the separate grounds for challenging Article 4 of the same regional law, since this challenge was absorbed into its judgment on the law's full text.


 Judgment No. 58 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Marca CARTABIA, Author of the Judgment
In this case the Court heard a referral order challenging the constitutionality of a Decree-Law enabling undertakings of strategic national interest to continue operations notwithstanding the seizure of industrial plants by the courts in relation to health and safety offences. After the proceedings had been launched, Parliament repealed the contested provision of the decree-law - by a law converting a different decree law - whilst however upholding the validity of any acts carried out whilst it had been in force, and at the same time re-enacting the provision verbatim. The Court struck down the legislation as unconstitutional, holding that the fact that the offending rule was now contained in a different provision to that originally contested was irrelevant, finding that it "impair[ed] the clarity of the law and the intelligibility of the legal order". Regarding the merits of the question, the Court found that "the legislator has not complied with the requirement to strike a reasonable and proportionate balance between all relevant constitutional interests, and thereby acted unconstitutionally in not taking due account of the requirements to protect the health, safety and bodily integrity of workers, when confronted with circumstances that expose them to a risk of death".


 Judgment No. 12 of 2018
Giorgio LATTANZI, President - Silvana SCIARRA, Author of the Judgment
In this case the Court heard a referral order concerning legislation from 2011 that purported to stipulate an "authentic interpretation" of a provision enacted in 1990 concerning the pension rights of individuals employed by certain banks. At the time the later legislation was enacted, litigation involving the National Institute for Social Security was pending in which, according to the interpretation adopted until that time by the courts, the INPS would have been unsuccessful, whereas, according to the new interpretation imposed by the contested decree-law, the INPS would have been successful. The Court ruled the contested legislation unconstitutional on the grounds that it encroached upon the functions reserved to the judiciary under the Constitution, interfering with the administration of justice in order to influence the outcome to a particular dispute. The Court referred to the case law of the ECtHR according to which retrospective legislation may not be enacted in such cases "save for overriding reasons of general interest", which on the facts did not obtain in this case.


 Judgment No. 5 of 2018
Paolo GROSSI, President - Marta CARTABIA, Author of the Judgment
In this case, the Court considered two applications from the Veneto Region contesting a Decree-Law laying down urgent provisions concerning vaccinations. The provisions listed ten vaccines mandatory for all minor children under the age of sixteen residing in Italy (including unaccompanied minor aliens), four of which were already mandatory, and six of which were elevated from recommended to mandatory status. Under the decree-law, the mandatory vaccines are a requirement for access to early childhood educational services, making enrollment contingent upon the presentation of a certificate of vaccination, and noncompliance can also result in administrative fines. The Applicant claimed that these requirements unduly compressed both constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of individuals and regional autonomy. The Court disagreed, and held these allegations to be unfounded. After ruling that interventions by third parties were inadmissible, the Court first described the history of vaccine legislation in Italy, which was marked by a mixture of compulsory and recommended vaccines, all provided free of charge, and varying degrees of regional autonomy in the area of vaccine regulation, particularly when vaccine coverage peaked in the nineteen nineties. Then it noted the current epidemiological context in Italy, marked by a troubling decline in vaccine coverage to levels considered alarming by national and international health organizations and a measles outbreak that had caused four deaths. It also pointed out that there was no scientific basis for a trending popular opinion that considered vaccines to be futile or even dangerous. Then, recalling the Legislator?s discretion in carrying out a reasonable balancing of these factors with regional and individual autonomy, the Court drew several conclusions: first, that urgent provisions were appropriate given the preventive nature of vaccination and the critical level of coverage in Italy, and that the Applicant inappropriately conflated epidemic emergencies with the kind of urgent need that could justify legislative intervention. Second, it noted that in medical practice, recommendation and obligation are conjoined concepts, and, therefore, shifting six vaccinations from the recommended to the compulsory category did not represent a significant change in their status. Third, it stated that requiring a certificate to enroll in school and imposing fines were reasonable, not least of all because the Legislator had provided for initial steps that included one-on-one meetings with parents and guardians to inform them about vaccine efficacy. Finally, it noted that, under certain conditions, Regions may experiment with downgrading certain vaccines from mandatory to suggested status, and that the Legislator could, in the future, extend this flexibility to other vaccines as well, under changed epidemiological conditions.


Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana

Che cos'è la Corte Costituzionale

Glossario

Pubblicazioni
Questo sito o gli strumenti terzi da questo utilizzati si avvalgono di cookie necessari al funzionamento ed utili alle finalità illustrate nella Cookie Policy. Scorrendo questa pagina, selezionando il link Accetto o proseguendo la navigazione in altra maniera, acconsenti all'uso dei cookie.   Accetto