ARE MEMORY LAWS UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

Are memory laws unconstitutional? The paper tries to answer this question. The problem is investigated from the point of view of Italian constitutional law: probably there are no universally valid solutions for all legal systems. After doing a survey of the sources of law establishing days of memory in Italian law, the paper tries to understand the very reason of their existence (ratiolegis). Usually, it is said that memory laws protect shared and “national” values: these values are specifically embodied in the historical events that laws compel to remember. This reason, however, could be contradicted by the fact that some memory days have been introduced by orders in council or even regional legislation: so the establishment of memory days could be a sort of manipulation made by political majority just to achieve social consensus. Should the Constitutional Court declare these laws unconstitutional as they imply a political use of historical events? What would be the parameter of judicial review? Could memorial laws be repealed by referendum? How is it possible to avoid that history gets confused with memory?