Guidelines. A shifting and disorientating category

Guidelines have recently been acknowledged as a legal category. First, guidelines emerged in extra legal fields. Then, they turned into a proper legal source regulating various areas of the legal order. Hence, guidelines emerge as worthy of attention from a constitutional point of view. The article explores both the scholarly debate and the related case law of the Italian Constitutional Court. In particular, it focuses on the Constitutional Court’s recognition of guidelines as yardsticks of judicial review of legislation, thus clarifying the relationship of guidelines with the primary legislation they refer to.