Introduction:
The applicant sought judicial recognition of Italian citizenship as a direct descendant of an Italian woman born in Italy in the early 20th century who later emigrated abroad. Because the intermediate descendant was born before 1948, administrative recognition was barred under the former discriminatory framework, making judicial intervention necessary.
Outcome:
The Court upheld the application and declared the applicant an Italian citizen, ordering the Ministry of the Interior and the competent Civil Status Officer to carry out all required registrations, transcriptions, and annotations in the civil registers, as well as the necessary communications to consular authorities. Legal costs were fully offset, given the jurisprudential nature of the issues involved
Challenge:
The case hinged on the historical discrimination embedded in pre-1948 citizenship laws, which excluded maternal transmission and imposed automatic loss of citizenship upon Italian women marrying foreign nationals. The Court addressed the continued effects of those rules and confirmed that their unconstitutionality removes any barrier to recognition, even when the relevant events occurred decades before the Constitution entered into force.
Action:
The legal team reconstructed the maternal line through certified and apostilled civil status records, demonstrating uninterrupted descent and the absence of any voluntary renunciation. Relying on Constitutional Court rulings and Supreme Court Joint Sections precedents, counsel established that the discriminatory provisions must be disapplied and that citizenship, once acquired by descent, is an essential personal status that may be asserted at any time. The Court accepted the claim and ordered full implementation by the authorities.
For the privacy of our clients, all names are fictional, and any identifying details in the judgements have been obscured.