Legislative Unresponsiveness and Constitutional Court’s Legitimacy in Italy

The Italian Constitutional Court has progressively developed more sophisticated methods of judicial review. One can say that, nowadays, la Corte plays an active role in the implementation of the Constitution by sending impulses to other constitutional organs. This function takes shape, for example, in the establishment of a dialogue with the legislator, which occurs through instructions and directives of the Court containing guidelines on future legislative frameworks. However, the collaborative approach of the court often proved to be remarkably ineffective in the Italian constitutional context, where the limited responsiveness of the Parliament has become a constant element in the relation between the two institutions. This issue becomes particularly problematic with regard to the Court´s judgements that need the reconstructive action of the Parliament to be applied. More specifically, in these judgments the Court renounces to declare certain provisions unconstitutional in order to preserve the discretionary powers of the legislator. Nevertheless, the Court also calls on the Parliament to intervene promptly and restore the constitutional legality. This paper aims to analyze to what degree a conflict may arise due to the scarce institutional cooperation of the Parliament and what consequences the latter has on both the Court and the Parliament in terms of legitimisation. Can the parliamentary inertia, on the one side, be considered as a form of ‘silent’ delegitimisation of the Court’s authority? Does it produce, on the other side, a ‘boomerang effect’ on the Parliament, which by not applying the Court´s judgments demonstrates to be incapable to perform its institutional function? This Paper adopts an empirical approach. It analyses three recent cases, in which the Parliament did not follow the explicit and repeated calls of the Court. Moreover, it suggests that the parliamentary inertia is today used by the Court as an excuse to legitimise its own role and to justify a greater intervention.