Abstract

Piero Craveri's essay explores the evolution of relations between executive and legal power in Twentieth-century European constitutional systems. The comparison focuses not so much on the British parliamentary versus the American presidential models, as on the Anglo-Saxon system versus the constitutional models obtaining in continental Europe, above all France and Italy. In the case of France, the essay goes into the cleavage caused by the 1958 Gaullist text in European constitutional history. From that moment on, the concern to set up Charters expressing and inspiring constitutional patriotism progressively gives way to the need for creating institutions capable of governing the incipient Welfare State. In the case of Italy, the essay explores the making of 1948 Consitutional Charter and the relationship between executive, legislative and judicial powers.