Italy New Constitution Part 5
The region (see in this App.), Established as a constitutional body, represents the most relevant and discussed of the reforms implemented by the constitution: it aims to be the highest recognition of local autonomy and tends, as the Ruini report notes, to place administered in self-government: it is a form of self-government. The 19 regions, configured almost entirely in accordance with traditional divisions and denominations, stand before the constitutional bodies of the state as predominantly administrative local constitutional bodies, completely removed from any dependence on the central government except for certain delegated functions, albeit subject to various state checks. The most typical manifestation of regional autonomy is the power of the region to give itself its own statute (which for some regions: Sicily, Sardinia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Val d’Aosta, and later also Friuli-Venezia Giulia, has a special character and is adopted by constitutional law): power which is however limited as the statute must be approved by law of the republic, and it is the constitution that determines which are the organs of the region: regional council, junta, president of the junta. The regional council exercises the legislative and regulatory powers attributed to the region, decides on the statute, proposes laws to the parliament and exercises the other functions conferred on it by the constitution and by the laws; elects the regional council and its president, who is entrusted with the regional government.
According to THEDRESSWIZARD, the legislative power of the region concerns matters of purely administrative or technical-economic interest of the region itself as well as the implementation of the laws of the republic, when these delegate it to the region. However, this legislation cannot be in conflict with the constitution or with the national interest or that of other regions: moreover, national laws must already be enacted on matters of regional legislation and that these establish only the fundamental principles, which regional laws must adapt to local needs. In the same matters, the region has administrative functions relating to its territory. The regions have financial autonomy. The provinces and municipalities remain as autonomous local bodies and as divisions of state and regional decentralization.
The constitution provides for a whole series of state controls (represented in each region by a government commissioner), which can lead to the referral of the regional law to the regional council due to incompetence or conflict of interests or to an appeal for legitimacy before the Constitutional Court. or of merit before the chambers, or even the dissolution of the regional council, by decree of the president of the republic, after hearing a commission of deputies and senators, in the cases established by the constitution.
New institutions in our constitutional order, and often invoked, are the constitutional guarantees. Having discarded the idea of entrusting the control of constitutionality, which is judicial but also on political matters, to the ordinary judiciary, it seemed preferable to establish a special body, the Constitutional Court (see court, in this App.), Which judges disputes relating to the constitutional legitimacy of laws and acts having the force of law, of the state, and of regional laws; when the Court declares, with a decision that cannot be challenged, the unconstitutionality of one of these rules, it ceases to have effect from the day following the publication of the decision, which therefore has effect only ex nunc: the chambers and the regional councils have the right to fill, if they deem it necessary, the legal gap that is thus created. For the constitutional law 9 February 1948, n. 1, issued to establish the conditions and terms of admissibility of constitutional legitimacy judgments, the question of unconstitutionality can only be raised by the state or by the regions: the thesis of recognizing this right also to natural and legal persons has not been accepted. Conflicts of attribution (already largely within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to joint sections) between the powers of the state, as well as those between the state and the regions and between the regions are also within the jurisdiction of the Court. Finally, the criminal jurisdiction for judgments against the President of the Republic and the ministers, which has already been mentioned, falls within the competence of the Court.
Another constitutional guarantee is given by the rigid establishment in the constitutional charter of the rules for its revision, and for the revision of constitutional laws, since not all the constitutional order of the state is exhausted in the constitution.
Constitutional revision laws and other constitutional laws (i.e. those which are so qualified in the constitution itself or which directly pertain to matters governed by it) must be deliberated twice by each chamber at an interval of not less than three months, and in the second vote of each chamber must have obtained an absolute majority. Except in the case that in this second vote each chamber has approved the law by a majority of two thirds, a suspensive popular referendum can be requested on it if, within three months of its publication, one fifth of the members of a chamber request it or five hundred thousand voters or five regional councils. These laws, by exception, are published before they are promulgated and are promulgated only after the expiry of the three month period or after the
Finally, the constitution declares that the republican form cannot be subject to constitutional revision; with this the Constituent Assembly wanted to solemnly sanction the immutability of the republican form given to Italy by the referendum of June 2, 1946 and exclude the possibility of a legal return of the monarchy.