Interpreting Statutes In Conformity With The Constitution: The Role Of The Constitutional Court And Ordinary Judges

The article illustrates the developments of the Italian centralized system of constitutional review from the advantaged perspective of the relationship between the Constitutional Court and the regular courts, seen in a chronological way from 1956, the inaugural year of the Constitutional Court, to the present day; and describes the ever-increasing use of constitutional provisions on the part of the regular courts in the resolution of the legal disputes. According to the author, once it had been clarified that the Constitutional Court and the regular courts are called upon in equal terms to use the constitutional provisions in the exercise of their functions, the judicial use of the Constitution and the consequent doctrine of the interpretation of the statute law in conformity with the Constitution has made the activities of the Constitutional Court and of the regular courts progressively more similar and strictly interlinked and coordinated.