The Italian Constitution

The story

Writing everyone's rules

After 2 June 1946, the Constituent Assembly, elected by the Italians, had an enormous task: to write the Constitution, that is, the fundamental law on which the new Republic was to stand. It was a difficult task, because the Assembly was made up of people with very different ideas: Christian Democrats, Communists, Socialists, Liberals, Republicans, members of the Common Man Front. They had fought Fascism, but they disagreed on many things about the society they wanted to build.

To prepare the text a committee of seventy-five members was set up, called the “Committee of 75”, divided into three subcommittees. From 1947 the president of the Assembly was Umberto Terracini, an anti-Fascist lawyer who had spent years in prison under Fascism. They worked for a year and a half, in long discussions, and every article was weighed word by word. In the end the various groups, respecting one another, reached an agreement that took account of all the ideas, and that was based on some shared values: freedom, equality, social justice, peace.

22 December 1947

On 22 December 1947 the Assembly approved the final text with 453 votes in favour and 62 against. The provisional head of state, Enrico De Nicola, promulgated it on 27 December, and the Constitution came into force on 1 January 1948. An original copy of the text is kept in Rome, in the historical archive of the Quirinal. It has 139 articles, plus some transitional and final provisions.

How it is built

The Constitution opens with the twelve “fundamental principles”, the most important rules. Article 1 says: “Italy is a democratic Republic, founded on labour. Sovereignty belongs to the people, who exercise it in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution.” That is, power belongs to the citizens, who exercise it by voting. Article 3 states that all citizens have equal dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion or political opinion, and that the Republic must remove the obstacles that stop equality from being real. Article 9 promotes culture and research and protects the landscape and the artistic heritage. Article 11 declares that “Italy rejects war as an instrument of aggression against the freedom of other peoples and as a means of settling international disputes”.

The first part deals with the rights and duties of citizens: personal freedom, freedom of thought and of the press, the right to health, to education (“schools are open to everyone”), to work, the right to strike, the duty to pay taxes fairly and to defend the homeland. The second part describes how the State is organised: Parliament, the government, the President of the Republic, the judges, the regions, the provinces and the municipalities.

To prevent anyone from changing the rules at will, the Italian Constitution is “rigid”: to amend it, long procedures and very large majorities are needed. A Constitutional Court, made up of judges, checks that laws conform to the Constitution. It was set up in 1956.

A Constitution against the past

Many articles come from the memory of Fascism and war. The Constitution guarantees the freedoms that the dictatorship had suppressed: the right to assemble, to found parties and trade unions, to express one's thoughts. It forbids the re-formation of the Fascist party and lays down that nobody may be persecuted for their religion or their ideas. Women, who had just voted for the first time, have the same rights as men.

In 1955 Piero Calamandrei, one of the founding fathers, spoke to a group of students in Milan and said that the Constitution is a piece of paper that does not move on its own: it is not a machine that, once started, keeps going by itself, but needs everyone's commitment every day: “it is a testament of a hundred thousand dead”, words that many still remember.