Abstract

At times like today, when tensions are running high over the value of national unity, discussion about the Risorgimento is burdened with new responsibilities. If history serves to a define the vision of the world of contemporaries for contemporaries, examination of the debate over the interpretation of the plebiscites and on the role that they had, or might have had, in modifying the nature of the Statute, poses problems with reference to today's unsolved questions. These notes do not deal with a problem of constitutional history (how were the plebiscites planned and implemented?) but of the history of constitutional culture: What role was recognised to the plebiscites by the legal thinking of the time and by subsequent legal thinking?