ABSTRACT
The present Italian legal system is based upon a written and rigid Constitution which entered into force on 1 January 1948 and is protected by a relatively centralised judicial review of legislation; it is mostly up to the courts (and here to any kind of court) to refer to the Constitutional Court a law required to decide a specific case so that the Court may decide whether legislation infringes the Constitution or not. Decisions concerning the constitutional legitimacy of laws are therefore centralised, but the right to initiate such proceedings is decentralised. This allows for a permanent and broad constitutional control of legislation.
