Abstract

There is no doubt that our country has had two, and only two, constitutions: the 1848 "albertino" Statute granted by King of Sardinia Carlo Alberto and the current republican Constitution. Upon this basis rests the historical problem of to what extent each of these constitutions managed to be an authentic fundamental law in the full sense. A constitution can be called 'fundamental law' when it fulfils three conditions: 1) that it effectively regulates the form of government and the overall arrangement of public powers; 2) that it contains a supremacy clause; 3) that constitutional change is regulated by the constitution itself. If, during the liberal age, the Statute was an essentially political set of rules where transformation in a true and proper legal sense was precluded, today's Constitution is a legal set of rules where political matters risk slipping away.