I GARANTI DELLA COSTITUZIONE Forme, modi e dinamiche delle interazioni tra Presidente della Repubblica e Corte costituzionale

This research investigates the forms, modes, and dynamics of interaction between the Constitutional Court and the President of the Republic, starting from the hypothesis that the transformations of the political and institutional framework over the past three decades have produced, alongside the well-known expansion of the role of the two constitutional guarantors, new forms of dialogue and unprecedented convergences. These developments can be traced not merely to parallel dynamics, but rather to a broader and increasingly unified reshaping of the system of constitutional guarantees, an understanding of which is essential to grasp the current configuration of the form of government. The analysis begins with the meta-guarantee function linking the two institutions, as the first sphere of their mutual interaction. This function is examined through the role played by the Head of State in the appointment of constitutional judges – based on an empirical analysis of the choices made throughout the history of the Republic – and through the influence exerted by constitutional case law on the definition of the presidential role. The analysis then turns to the function of guaranteeing legislation and its most recent developments, considering, on the one hand, the gradual emergence of presidential instruments alternative to the referral of legislation back to Parliament and, on the other, the renewed centrality of the Constitutional Court within the constitutional order. A comparison of these two evolutionary trajectories reveals both implicit and explicit interactions, as well as significant convergences at both the substantive and methodological levels, reflecting an increasingly pronounced complementarity between the two forms of constitutional control. In particular, what emerges is the progressive development of a dialogical relationship between the two guarantors, which also extends, in accordance with a shared institutional vocation, to their relations with other institutional actors. A parallel expansion and convergence can ultimately be observed in their relationship with civil society, where the strengthening of the communication tools employed by both institutions is accompanied by shared risks of overexposure and delegitimisation, within a delicate balance between institutional substitution and self-restraint. In the joint construction, by the two guardians of the Constitution, of a genuine form of “relational constitutional law”, the research identifies both a constructive response to the crisis of parliamentary representation and a phenomenon which, if left to rest solely on the constitutional guarantors, exposes both institutions to significant risks.