Law of Italy

The law of Italy is the system of law across the Italian Republic. The Italian legal system has a plurality of sources of production. These are arranged in a hierarchical scale, under which the rule of a lower source cannot conflict with the rule of an upper source (hierarchy of sources).^[1]

The Constitution of 1948 is the main source.^[2] The Italian civil code is based on codified Roman law with elements of the Napoleonic civil code and later statutes. The civil code of 1942 replaced the original one of 1865.^[2] The penal code ("The Rocco Code") was also written under fascism (1930).

Both the civil code and the penal code have been modified in order to be in conformity with the current democratic constitution and with social changes.^[2]

Internal sources:
, which regulates the formation of laws and determines the discipline of regulatory acts;

State and regional laws, as well as decrees (government acts issued when there is an urgent matter that requires timely intervention) and legislative decrees (acts issued by the government as delegated by the Parliament which establishes basic principles and indications that the government must follow to propose the law). More recently many laws were reorganised under different codes (Italian law codes) and testi unici (unified law);

Government regulation, issued by the Government, ministers and other administrative authorities;

Customary law, a source subordinated to the law and which can operate only within the limits permitted by the law itself.

Constitution

International sources: norms adopted by a group of states on the basis of one or more international agreements, united in a supranational organization, which stand above the individual laws of each member state but which have no direct effect on citizens. They are called . In addition to written conventions, international customs must be included among the international sources.

treaties or agreements

Acts of the .
European Union regulation;

European Union directive.

European Union

In Italy the legal norms originate from the following sources:^[13]

With regard to external sources art. 117 of the Italian Constitution: "Legislative power is exercised by the State and by the Regions in compliance with the Constitution, as well as with the constraints deriving from the community order and international obligations".^[14]

Private law[edit]

Private law is that part of a civil law legal system which is part of the jus commune that involves relationships between individuals, such as the law of contracts and torts^[15] (as it is called in the common law), and the law of obligations (as it is called in civil legal systems). In Italian law, the main regulatory body for private law is the Italian civil code, which governs both civil and commercial law.^[16] The Italian civil code was approved with Royal decree no. 262 of 16 March 1942 and entered into force on 21 April of the same year.^[17] It was born from the merger between the Italian Civil Code of 1865 and the Italian Commercial Code of 1882.^[18] It is divided into six books, composed in turn into titles, chapters, sections, as well as 2,969 articles.^[19] The six books deal respectively of people and family, heritage, property, bonds, working and protection of rights.^[19]

Italian law codes

Judiciary of Italy

Law enforcement in Italy

Ettore Salvatore D'Elia and Mario Ragona. In Winterton and Moys (eds). . Second edition. Bowker-Saur. 1997. Chapter Sixteen: Italy. Pages 271 to 292.