Abstract

Forming the object of this work is an attempt to make a contribution to the redefinition of three key concepts of public and administrative law: function, administrative power and power of discretion. These concepts, the object of an age-old stratification of meanings and often evocative cross-references, are 'freighted', i.e. not at all technically neutral, instead answering to certain conceptions of administrative law and the doctrine thereof. Therefore, the chosen viewpoint is that of the identification of certain persistent theoretical/ideological elements in Italian public law doctrine in the making into themes of these key concepts, often recognisable due to the employment of a metaphorical language, common right from the origins as much to institutionalism as to normativism, the two basic orientations with which can be associated, discounting the simplifications entailed in this kind of classification, the protagonists of the construction of the theory of public law in Italy.