Abstract

The article resumes the subject of the relationship between principles and rules, underlining some crucial issues that arise with reference to the cultural heritage management. Its starting point is the attempt made to transfer to the Valle d'Aosta Region some administrative functions regarding historical archives, and in this perspective the article aims, in the first place, to retrace the allocation of the Regions' administrative powers in that field. The analysis mainly focuses on the criteria of the archival science and on their relationship between legal principles, pointing out that the issues regarding the cultural heritage management are, in fact, symptoms of a more difficult problem: the comparison between legal positivism and science and the pretension that the results achieved by the science must take priority on the provisions set forth by the law.