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CHAPTER 42
Chief Justice Milton Ray Guevara
on Italy’s Contributions to Dominican
Constitutional Law
(Summary of remarks by the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court
of the Dominican Republic at a conference held on October 25, 2018)
Summary by Wenceslao Vega Boyrie
Former Professor of Law History at the Catholic University of Santo Domingo (UCSD)
•
ecognizing that constitutionalism began in England, France, and the United States, it is nevertheless
worth noting the theoretical contributions of Italian jurists who, according to Chief Justice Milton
Leónidas Ray Guevara, were the first to analyze the concept of the constitution, even when it was
not yet a subject in law schools. The magistrate mentions the works of Vittorio Emanuele Orlan-
do, Santi Romano, and others at the universities of Palermo, Ferrara, and Bologna in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. In this framework, the most innovative contributions of these pioneers involved the
concepts of autonomy of constitutional law over others and the supremacy of the constitution over laws and
rulers. Ray Guevara acknowledges, however, that it was rather theory that prevailed over jurisprudence in
those formative years for the subject of constitutional law.
Perhaps most striking, in this regard, is how the Italians were followed by the theorists of the nine-
teenth-century French school led by Duverger and others, and the Germans with doctrinal theorists, such as
Gerber and Jellinek.
The concepts and theories of these precursors of constitutionalism today are analyzed by the author as a
cumulative escalation, increasing over the years, and given the geopolitical circumstances of Europe in the
eighteenth through twentieth centuries, until reaching the first decades of the past century.
Thus, Ray Guevara analyzes this latter period with certain details as to how the political and ideological
shifts of preceding periods influenced Italian constitutionalism with the arrival of fascism and the introduction
of the concepts of “the masses” and “the party” into the constitutional order.
Then, with the fall of the dictatorship and the trauma of Italy’s defeat at the end of World War II, the author
analyzes the constitutional process of 1948, which represented a rare case where, breaking with the past, all ideo-
logical groups—from the extreme right to the extreme left—united to provide Italy with a consensual constitution.
Ray Guevara analyzes in detail that emblematic constitution which marked the new course for Western
constitutionalism, which is still in force today in Italy, albeit with modifications.
The stage after the promulgation of the Italian constitution of 1948 is incisively analyzed by the author,
citing influences in other texts, as in the case of the Dominican constitution of 1963, and mentioning the con-
cepts of protection of the family, equality in marriage, and the rights to education and health, among other
points that the Dominicans gleaned from the Italian constitution. Toward the end of his analysis of the Italian
constitution of 1948, he informs us:
Italy has been characterized as one of the most important and influential centers of theoretical production
in Europe, and it has well-known philosophers, political scientists, and jurists who transcend the narrow delin-
eations of Constitutional Law, mentioning the figures of Norberto Bobbio and Giovanni Sartori.