INSMLI - Origins of the Constitution III. Prolusion by Oscar Luigi Scalfaro

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Origins of the Constitution - Part III
A Series of Lessons The Course of Liberty 1943-1945. Opening address by President OSCAR LUIGI SCÀLFARO on the theme "ORIGINS OF THE CONSTITUTION".
Milan, February 4th 2005

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Part I
Opposition to the Fascist Dictatorship

Part II
The Resistance Movement

Part III
The Republic and the Constitution

The Constituent Assembly
Five hundred and fifty-five persons were elected to the Constituent Assembly. I was twenty-seven years old and you would have the right to ask me, "What did you know?" I knew very little. I had a degree in law. I had been competitively selected to the magistrature. I had experienced my own and others' suffering. But life will teach you that it's one thing to live experiences – even heavy ones -- at twenty, twenty-five, twenty-eight, and another thing to live through the same things at fifty, fifty-five. They are different levels of maturity; the ways of perceiving them are different. Reconsidering that experience and rereading the Constitution, I think I had guts – I must say quite a lot of nerve -- to get up at that age and debate some articles. But when one is young, one has a right to understand. Extenuating circumstances are never denied to anyone. We were 555; for this reason, it sounded a bit strange to me when some years ago, in that very hot season, there were five majority parliamentarians who went to the summits of the Dolomites to debate constitutional reform. It is true that we live in an era in which concepts are tightly summarized and we reason in small bites, but it really seemed to me that this was an excessive summarizing.

The Constitutional Charter and the Human Person
The Constitutional Charter was born. This Charter has a distinguishing feature. In this Charter arose the Human Person. This is the focal point and this is the distinction between the dictatorship and the democracy: the dictatorship demeans the person. In the first articles, in the first eleven articles of our Charter, it is said that the human person, the citizen, holds rights and participates in the life of the State. Those articles are a dialogue between the citizen and the State. The State is not born by bullying but because the citizens give birth to it; and the State must consider the person, beginning from the most marginalized and weakest, in order to allow that person to walk and to keep step with the others! The Charter proclaims the rights of the Person, but what is politics if not the capacity to turn those written rights into a reality lived by all citizens? This is a theme that never dies out because it is a continually ongoing process; therefore, even today, there is space for politics with a capital P! Political life awaits you, young people, no matter which side you stand on, to defend the values, the rights, the dignity of the human person, up to that wonderful right that is the equality of all people before the law, and up to the religious reconciliation that says that all religions have equal dignity, and up to article 11 that says that "Italy repudiates war" and is perhaps one of the most powerful articles!

The Repudiation of War
Why does Italy repudiate war? Because international law makes provision for war only as legitimate defense, because it would be crazy to sanction the "right of aggression." It would be like recognizing the right to robbery, the right to murder, and would soon result in a world very different from the civil world in which we want to live

Conclusion
The first session of the Constituent Assembly was held on 25 June 1946, presided over by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, who had been Prime Minister at the time of the victory in 1918 and had left Versailles during the peace negotiations crying, because Italy with its six hundred thousand dead was badly mistreated. Anyway, he was a man of great prestige. At the end of the session, I waited for the hall to empty and went to him as he descended the steps of the chairman's bench, and I said to him, "President, may I shake your hand?" He said to me, "With pleasure, but who are you?" (He was professor of Constitutional Law and had spent his life among young people.) So I told him, "Look, professor, my name would not mean anything to you. I am unknown. My name is Oscar Luigi Scàlfaro, but I would like to tell you why I wanted to shake your hand. Because in my third year of elementary school, we read a book called The Book of Medallions. This book described the lives of Camillo Cavour, Carlo Alberto, Vittorio Emanuele II, right up to Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Prime Minister at the time of victory. For me, you have stepped off the pages of my third grade book!" He shook my hand, and I began a political adventure that has lasted sixty years

La prolusione di Oscar Luigi Scalfaro qui riprodotta fa parte di un cofanetto di 12 DVD che contiene la registrazione delle conferenze e un CD con i testi scritti delle relazioni presentate in occasione delle celebrazioni del 60° della Resistenza.
Produzione "TV Days" sas di Milano. Grafica studio Origoni Steiner.

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