Verso il codice deontologico forense. L’autonomia dell’avvocatura nell’Italia repubblicana

The paper focuses on the debate over the code of conduct for lawyers in Italy in the second half of the 20th century. The debate concerned first and foremost the choice of whether or not to codify ethical rules. Furthermore, it was affected by the relationship between the legal profession and the judiciary, which in turn was framed within the broader debate over the independence of the legal profession itself, after bar associations had been established in the second half of the 19th century. As far as the contents of the code of conduct, Italian lawyers could rely on a longestablished heritage of principles and duties. As a matter of fact, a deontological model of legal ethics took shape over the course of the Middle Ages and early modern period, thanks to contributions from both law and morality. Morality has contributed so much to the formation of this model that it has influenced the debate over whether ethical rules are legal or moral in nature until nowadays. From a formal point of view, the question was whether or not to put ethical principles and rules into a written code. As a matter of fact, in the view of the State monopoly of the law of the 19th century, a written code of conduct for lawyers would have endangered the independence (which indeed was very limited) of Italian bar associations. Only the progressive succeeding, during the 20th century, of a pluralistic and democratic view of the law within the constitutional frame allowed the debate over the codification of legal ethics develop into the first Italian code of conduct for lawyers in 1997.