Abstract

The number of laws in Italy dedicated to the memory of historical events is quite high. Furthermore, there are innumerous bills of this nature presently laid down in Parliament. Legal scholarship has given little attention to these laws despite the fact that there important issues to be considered that are capable of altering the "ratio" and the aims of this type of legislation. The Author highlights these issues by employing parameters of analysis used in those sciences that address the topic of "memory" (such as psychology, psychiatry, biology, neurophysics, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history, sociology and political science). In particular, he examines Law 211/2000 (which introduced the Day of Memory of the Shoah) and Law 91/2003 (with which the National Museum of the Shoah was instituted) consequently underlining the limits and aporia when compared to the will of the lawmaker to create a collective shared memory that is historically flawless and a pedagogy for the future.