Even on the surname of the father, the Constitutional Court does the work of the parliament

Even on the surname of the father

Which country is the one in which the Constitutional Court, guarantor of the Charter, must take the place of Parliament, as happened in the case of the father's surname? A maimed, incomplete and at least immature country. In which the parliamentary groups, emanations of the parties themselves representative in more or less mediated ways of the popular will, simply do not do their job. Or rather, they do it however they like. Leaving aside, given the inability to find an agreement between even very distant parties, the thorniest issues for one's electorate. Which are then almost always those that revolve around social rights. Thus they end up under the carpet of parliamentary congestion until the sentence brings them back to the surface.

The decision of the Council of 27 April on the illegitimacy of the obligatory and automatic attribution of the paternal surname to the children, of which we will have to analyze the motivations, is just yet another proof of how the Chambers - regardless of the number of their members, a false problem - work syncopated, punctually overtaken by the most important constitutional guarantee body. Which undoubtedly also has, among others, the task of submitting their decisions to the chambers and regional councils "so that, where they deem it necessary, they take constitutional forms" to settle the issues raised (Article 136 of the Constitution). But what work does he do, or should he do, else. In this case too, in fact, as with end-of-life issues or electoral mechanisms, there were several bills that could be approved before yet another goad of the court led by Giuliano Amato.

In fact, there are at least five "reforms" of the double surname deposited in the Justice Committee of the Senate and on which now, in a film that has already been seen, many expectations will be poured out, only to be released in the best case in many months . Those bills obviously remain fundamental, now more than before, because the principles that the Council establishes by decreeing the unconstitutionality of some rules, or parts of them, often open up spaces that are destructive rather than constructive. A kind of horror vacui. In the sense that they allow you to do things that were previously impossible and prohibited by unconstitutional laws but in the empty space of a legislative vulnerability that the Chambers have the duty to fill as soon as possible to avoid chaotic or difficult to regulate developments in the long term. On the contrary: they would have the duty, in an ideal and efficient system, to avoid a priori. By doing their job. In this case, to begin with, it is necessary to establish what to do when there is no parental agreement or how to avoid the proliferation of double and quadruple surnames in the future, for example by establishing a solution whereby the children keep the first surname of both parents.

The point is that, as for the continuous pursuit of the rules relating to the end of life, the living will, the electoral laws (who remembers the resounding rejections of the ramshackle Porcellum or Italicum?), the continuous intervention in advance of the Constitutional Court (which is often an intervention in dramatic delay on reality, here we mean in advance of the Chambers) removes their deeper legislative role from the assemblies. The political, innovative, value-based one. Leaving the parliamentarians with the sole task of defining the technical scope of what has been established by others. And certainly it would not be bad if they did it without trouble but, in short, Parliament should take note of reality, guide it and inspire it according to principles of reform and guarantee for all, it should not let itself be towed by those who should do something else for their job.

Oppositions often accuse the governments on duty of making excessive use of trust in the approval of the fundamental measures of their mandate or of abusing the decree-laws. If this is true, however, no one ever remembers that even this replacement of the Court effectively empties the Chambers of their elective task, relegating them to mere executors of principles sanctioned by others. With the freedom of surname, such a simple question and already partially submitted to the attention of the Chamber - coincidentally - by another sentence six years ago as well as on aspects that affect even more deeply in people's daily lives. >