The Use of National and Common Constitutional Traditions in Italian Legal Scholarship and High-Level Courts

The article analyses how the Italian legal scholarship and highest courts have construed the Italian constitutional tradition and the notion of common constitutional traditions. It starts with a brief overview of the notion of “legal tradition” in comparative legal scholarship, and then considers the differences between the latter and other neighbouring, but different, concepts. After that, the work gives an account of the authors who have provided the most valuable contributions in the field, and then surveys how the high courts have made use of the expression of (common) constitutional traditions. The conclusion suggests a categorization of such uses.