Abstract

In some recent judgments, the Supreme Court of Italy declared that judges may not apply the European Convention of Human Rights, because its provisions may only be used either to interpret laws or to raise a question of possible conflict between a law and the Constitution in front of the Constitutional Court. This surprising statement is due both to a misreading of two Constitutional Court’s judgments dating back to 2007 and to a widespread lack of precision in identifying three notions strictly connected but bearing different meaning and scope, like self-executing treaties, directly applicable regulations and rules entailing a direct effect.