Law of Italy

The law of Italy is the system of law across the Italian Republic. The Italian legal system has a plurality of sources of production. These are arranged in a hierarchical scale, under which the rule of a lower source cannot conflict with the rule of an upper source (hierarchy of sources).

The Constitution of 1948 is the main source. The Italian civil code is based on codified Roman law with elements of the Napoleonic civil code and later statutes. The civil code of 1942 replaced the original one of 1865. The penal code ("The Rocco Code") was also written under fascism (1930).

Both the civil code and the penal code have been modified in order to be in conformity with the current democratic constitution and with social changes.

Article 117 of the Constitution of Italy shares legislative power, according to the concerned matters, between Italian Parliament and regional councils. While a law ratified by the national Parliament is simply called legge and is enforced on the whole country, laws ratified by regional councils are named leggi regionali (regional laws) and can be applied only in the concerned region. Parliament is competent to legislate for the matters expressly indicated in the second paragraph of Article 117, while the Regions are competent to legislate for the remaining matters (residual competence).

There is also a second list of matters contained in the third paragraph of article 117 called matters of concurrent legislation, in which the Regions have legislative power, except for the determination of fundamental principles (framework laws), reserved to the State.

The Government can also issue an act having the force of law (called decreto-legge, "law decree"), but this must be confirmed later by Parliament, under penalty of forfeiture of the law decree. Furthermore, the Parliament can delegate the Government (through a law called legge delega, "delegation law", which must precede government regulation) to legislate on a certain subject, but at the same time establishes the margins within which the Government can move in legislating. The normative act issued in this way by the Government takes the name of decreto legislativo, "legislative decree". The power of legislative initiative is attributed to each parliamentarian, to the people, through the institution of the popular law proposal, carried out by collecting at least 50,000 signatures, and to the Council of Ministers, whose bills must however be countersigned by the President of the Italian Republic.

Still in the sphere of legislative power, there are some cases in which it belongs to the sovereign people: through the institution of the abrogative referendum and, in constitutional matters, through the institution of the confirmatory referendum of constitutional laws. All laws must be promulgated by the President of the Italian Republic who can postpone it only once, otherwise he would have the right to veto a law in Parliament if he considers that it is in conflict with the Constitution.

In Italy the legal norms originate from the following sources: