The article addresses the problem of the “constitutionalisation” of Italian legal order focusing on some developments in the argumentative structure of Italian Constitutional Court decisions, that have significant implications on the role of the Court in the Italian legal system.
In this perspective some types of decisions – due to the peculiar features of Italian Constitutional jurisdiction – can be described as “statute-oriented” (and in this sense “abstract”, as aimed at assuring the “objective” conformity of general legal provisions with the Constitution); others are “right oriented” (and in this sense “concrete”) because the reasoning of the Court is more focused on the problems of the protection of individual rights as they arise in the specific case from which the constitutional question derives.
