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European University Institute - Department of Law

Silvana Sciarra elected President of the Italian Constitutional Court

Silvana Sciarra, former Professor at the EUI’s Law Department, and the first woman elected by the Italian Parliament as a judge at the Constitutional Court of Italy, has recently been appointed as the Court's new President.

22 September 2022

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On 20 September 2022, Professor Sciarra became the second woman to be elected as President of the highest court in Italy in matters of constitutional law. The first, current Justice Minister Marta Cartabia, is an EUI Law alumna.

Professor Sciarra succeeds former two-time Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. She will serve as President until 11 November 2023 - the end of her nine-year mandate as a Judge in the Italian Constitutional Court.

At the EUI, she served as Professor of Labour Law and European Social Law from 1994 until 2003. She was Director of the EUI’s Law Department from 1995 to 1996 and coordinated the programme on gender studies from 2002 to 2003.

An Italian jurist and academic, Sciarra was Harkness Fellow at UCLA and the Harvard Law School (1974-1976). She was a Fulbright Fellow at UCLA and Visiting Professor in several universities, including Warwick (Leverhulme Professor), the Columbia Law School (BNL Professor), Cambridge (where she held the Arthur Goodhart Chair in Legal Science 2006-2007), Stockholm, Lund, LUISS Roma, and University College London. She holds PhD Honoris Causa in Law from the Universities of Stockholm (2006) and Hasselt (2012).

Before being appointed to the Constitutional Court by the Italian Parliament in 2014, she was a Professor of Labour Law at the University of Florence and the University of Siena.

In 2020, Sciarra delivered the EUI Law Department's Inaugural Lecture for the new academic year, in which she discussed her emotional ties to the Institute and emphasised the role of social law during the pandemic. She also served as a speaker in the 2019 edition of the EUI’s annual flagship conference 'The State of the Union'.

During her time as a Professor at the EUI, Sciarra acted as supervisor to various PhD candidates in the Law Department, including current EUI Law Professor Claire Kilpatrick. In learning of her new appointment, Kilpatrick shares "I am proud and delighted to see my former EUI supervisor, Professor Sciarra, elected as President of the Italian Constitutional Court. She will bring to the role her fine legal analysis, her knowledge of European law and her deep commitment to fundamental values."

Last update: 03 October 2022

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