10 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NOS. 1-2 (2024)
Rule of Law: A Normative Ideal and Its Implications for the Italian Public Administration
by Edoardo Chiti and Gianluigi Palombella The article discusses the relevance of the Rule of Law for the Italian public administration. It opens by observing that the Rule of Law is a more demanding notion than usually assumed in the Italian discourse, a normative ideal encapsulating a specific and challenging rationale. More precisely, the rationale of the Rule of Law as a normative ideal is to be found in the beneficial tension between two sides in the organization of legality, both to be considered as in the interest of the community and the citizens: the law produced by political institutions, on the one hand, and some ‘other’ law beyond the purview of the public power, on the other. Such understanding of the Rule of Law is at times echoed by the reflection of a limited number of administrative law scholars particularly sensitive to legal change. As for the legal institutes usually associated with the Rule of Law, most of them are aligned with such rationale. But it would be appropriate to establish a clear and direct link between the Rule of Law as a normative ideal and its concrete manifestations in the Italian administrative system. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
