The Oxymoron of the Italian Legal System: The Administrative-Law: From the Collapse of the Genoa Bridge to a Ruling of the Italian Constitutional Court

Abstract

The tragic collapse of the Genoa bridge – an event that hit the world headlines few years ago, also for the huge number of casualties caused – has engendered in Italy, more recently, multifarious legal controversies. In addition to whether the Italian Government was legally entitled to terminate the long-term service concession arrangements with the private entity in charge of the maintenance of the bridge, further subtle legal issues, of a public law nature, have followed up too. As to the latter, the contribution discusses the one relating to the legal characterisation of the piece of legislation (the obscure and opaque “administrative-law”) which the Italian Government has adopted in order to rule out, apparently within any legal-contractual justification, from the public contest of the Genoa bridge re-construction, an Italian company. This entity was the one in charge of the maintenance of the Italian motorway network, including the infamous bridge. The same Italian Constitutional Law has been recently required to enter the heated debate, with an ensuing decision which, as dissected in the article, has ascertained whether the different acts of the Italian Government, promoted and implemented in the aftermath of the Genoa Bridge, were legitimate. In this very complex scenario, the contribution is also aimed, from a more theoretical perspective, at shedding a light on the myriad of laws (administrative, executive, proper laws) that in the Italian legal system have blossomed in the last decades. Genoa bridge collapse, Italian motorways and service concession arrangements, right of termination, administrative-laws, constitutional legitimacy, rule of law, due process of law, concessionaire’s rights, European Union Law, competition law