Abstract

When rights become object of political and institutional conflict and when this happens along the axis center-periphery, the gateways to constitutional review become very important. These conflicts get to the Constitutional Court as controversies between State and Regions but they are in substance about constitutional protection of human rights. Two procedural rules govern the possibility to raise issues concerning constitutional rights during principaliter proceedings as activated by the State or Regions: the State can challenge regional law by using all of the Constitution (including rights) as parameter; Regions on the contrary can denounce violations of parameters different from Title V Part II - formal or substantive, including also rights - only when such violations result into a reduction of the autonomy of the Regions themselves. This essay investigates both rules but gives less attention to the former, which has been amply articulated in the literature, and more thoroughly concentrates on the latter, still more slippery. According to the second rule, some important human rights questions (mostly in the field of health) have been recently declared admissible to the Constitutional Court.