Abstract

The essay analyzes the temporal manipulations that characterize recent Case law of the Italian Constitutional Court. The essay observes, on one side, how the novelty of decisions concerning temporal effects is potentially harmful to legal certainty, and, on the other side, how the said decisions may be in contrast with the legal provisions governing the temporal effects of rulings of unconstitutionality. In the scholarship, there have been attempts to justify these developments by reference to the superior objective of delivering constitutional justice. In this essay we question this scholarship because, among other things, it is based on the wrong assumption that the Constitutional Court can intervene on the temporal effects of its decisions as part of its balancing exercise. In the absence of what we believe would be a necessary legislative intervention by Parliament to regulate what the Court can and cannot do with regard to the temporal effects of its decisions, we invite scholars to be vigilant over developments in Constitutional Case law – the role of scholarship should be not to justify every new decision technique of the Court, but to closely monitor such developments to identify potential abuses.