On the road again: propositional observations on constitutional history

Abstract

The essay intends to go over the changes that occurred within Italian constitutional history over the last decade, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the “Giornale” created by the Laboratorio Barnave of the University of Macerata. It analyses the issues of methodological nature which have initially marked this still young discipline – a branch which is still strongly constitutive of the history of institutions, but which at the same time is marked by interdisciplinarity and by shared research fields with other subjects like, first of which and but not only, the history of political doctrines and thought – among which above all there are the chronological limit imposed by the birth of written constitutions (within a Eurocentric vision, the starting term is inevitably 1789) and the focus, often all-too limited, on the universe itself of the constitutions, rather than on the centuries-old processes which led to their genesis by way of building systems of power limitation. We then underline how today, after ten years, we can instead actively and serenely face a constitutional history “broadly understood”, in which – without obviously losing the scientific methodological shrewdness which always distinguished this discipline – not only an even ample expansion of the studied historical period but also a more open and innovative use of the sources can be fully introduced. Finally we propose, for the future, a continuous renewal of expounding patterns and communicative stylistic features which allows the scholars of constitutional history – along the path that the “Giornale” has been able to open and indicate during its activity – to transmit their own knowledge and thoughts in a more enjoyable and fascinating way, marking them (also for the benefit of an audience wider than university students) with that passion which always marks the universal and epochal vocation of power to organise itself always in different forms.