The Albertine Statute: Origins, Content, and Application

The article examines the Albertine Statute of 4 March 1848 in its genesis, content, and application. It argues that the Statute, formally an octroi charter granted by Charles Albert, was substantively the outcome of a political mediation between the Crown, the government, and the moderate liberal élites, modeled on the French and Belgian charters. It then analyzes the organization of powers and the catalog of rights, highlighting the gap between a text outlining a “pure” constitutional monarchy and a practice that soon produced a parliamentary one. Finally, it addresses the Statute’s elasticity and flexibility, which enabled both the parliamentary transformation and the fascist regression without formal repeal, concluding that the fate of a constitution depends above all on the political and cultural consensus sustaining it.