The Constitutional Court excluded the duty of Italian judges to comply with the ICJ decision on 'Jurisdictional Immunity of the State'

This work comments the important decision No. 238 of 2014 by which the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that the 2012 judgment of the International Court of Justice on 'Jurisdictional Immunity of the State' (Germany vs. Italy, Greece intervening) cannot be implemented in Italy because contrary to the fundamental principles on human rights and the individual right to a judicial remedy, as guarantees by, respectively, Articles 2 and 24 of the Constitution. The decision, concerning non recognition of foreign states' immunity from Italian jurisdiction for acts that, though performed by state organs in the exercise of their public functions constitute war crimes, marked a further development of so-called 'counter-limits doctrine' by which the Constitutional Court has being detecting limits on the entering of international rules into the Italian legal system, any time their content cannot be reconciled with fundamental constitutional values. The ruling of the Court in decision 238 was very debated among jurists, as possibly representing a dramatic turning point and, in some comments, even a threat to the relationship between international law and Italian domestic legal order.