Le linee guida nel "sistema delle fonti"

This thesis aims to reflect on the expansion of guidelines in legal systems today. More specifically, the investigation aims at assessing the impact that these instruments may have on the production of regulations, questioning, where possible, the risks and benefits connected to their adoption. With this in mind, the study conducted in these pages begins by attempting to trace the first uses of the term "guidelines" within the domestic legal system and offers some interpretations of the reasons that may have favoured their use and subsequent diffusion. Later on, the observation of the most recurrent features of the instruments under examination opens some reflections on the dogmatic practicability of a regulatory model for guidelines, identifying the possible peculiarities and salient aspects both with reference to its expressions in domestic law, and with regard to the forms it has taken in other legal systems (national and supranational). Going beyond the more theoretical approach of the first part, the continuation of the work reports, instead, a review of the main examples of guidelines used within the domestic system, paying particular attention to those developed in the subsystem of independent authorities, those drawn up for clinical practice and those that, in various ways, have, finally, integrated the recent discipline of contrast to Sars-CoV-2. In this part of the work, the model hypothetically underlying the use of guidelines is put in relation with other and more classic constructions, giving rise to a comparison between the expressions of this new figure and the main characteristics of other and older legal institutions. The last part of the text, proposing some summary considerations, aims to illustrate the possible results of the investigation, highlighting the consequences that the use of this model may have on the functioning of the system of sources and on the constitutional order.