ABSTRACT
Fundamental rights and freedoms have special recognition and protection, since they are inalienable, imprescriptible and inviolable. The republican form of government agreed by referendum and closely linked to the principle of democracy constitutes a positive, though implicit, foundation of both constitutional case law and doctrine. The regulatory principles have a special link with both the 'structural principles', among which is the democratic principle, and also with the 'constitutional principles', from which programmatic norms, which deal with the dynamics of the legal order, are derived. The Italian Constitution establishes three explicit limits to the power of constitutional review. These are: the "republican form" of government; the inviolable human right to develop unhindered, in individual and collective contexts; and an explicit procedural limit on the merger of existing Regions or the creation of new Regions. Lawyers faced with the supremacy of constitutions must recognize the pre-eminence of the fundamental principles that characterize them.
