Alla ricerca dei doveri pubblici dello Stato liberale italiano: considerazioni iniziali sulla dottrina e le istituzioni (1861-1915)

The role of individual public duties within liberal constitutional science is extremely limited: only a few generic paragraphs consider public duties as mere forms of limitation of subjective rights, whereas the latter are raised to the sole juridical situations that order the relationship between individuals and public authority. But for an important re-emergence of public duties in the works on public law of the school of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, which is also a consequence of the influence exerted by the works of German public law, liberal doctrine appears to describe a country devoid of a culture of public duties. On the other hand, education of the citizens to the awareness and performance of public duties was effectively achieved by the institutions of the Liberal State and constituted a subject of open debate in various reviews and publications. The first generalized individual public duties, in particular compulsory military service and compulsory school attendance, were of notable importance in educating citizens to the principles of a civic religion that was functional for the process of nation-building, in the context of which a pre-eminent role was occupied by duties. Of considerable interest for a study of this paedagogical operation is the contribution provided by the internal sources of such institutions, namely, the rules of military discipline and school syllabuses.