The Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia ( it, Parlamento del Regno di Sardegna, also called ''Parlamento Subalpino'') was the bicameral

parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

of the

Kingdom of Sardinia The Kingdom of Sardinia,The name of the state was originally Latin: , or when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is , in French , in Sardinian , and in Piedmontese . also referred to as the Kingdom of Savoy-S ...

History

It was established in 1848 by the

Albertine Statute The Statuto Albertino (English: ''Albertine Statute'') was the constitution granted by King Charles Albert of Sardinia to the Kingdom of Sardinia on 4 March 1848 and written in Italian and French. The Statute later became the constitution of ...

G. Buonomo, ''Sul processo verbale della seduta d’apertura del Parlamento nazionale nel 1848'', Giano, n. 4/2020
/ref> and became the

Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy The Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy ( it, Parlamento del Regno d'Italia) was the bicameral parliament of the Kingdom of Italy. It was established in 1861 to replace the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia and lasted until 18 June 1946, when i ...

upon the

unification of Italy The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

in 1861. It is thus the ultimate ancestor of the modern Parliament of Italy. There were two chambers: * The Subalpine Senate, whose members were appointed for life by the king, which could not be dissolved, and was based at the Palazzo Madama; * The Chamber of Deputies, whose members were elected by men who met a property qualification, through a

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

system, with staggered terms. It was based at the

Palazzo Carignano Palazzo Carignano is a historical building in the centre of Turin, Italy, which houses the Museum of the Risorgimento. It was a private residence of the Princes of Carignano, after whom it is named. Its rounded façade is different from other f ...

. Joint sessions of the Parliament, for solemn occasions like the "speech from the crown" (''discorso della corona''), were held at the Palazzo Carignano, for space reasons. The two chambers were theoretically equal in power (the so-called "Perfect bicameralism"), like the modern Italian Parliament. In practice, however, it came to be "lop-sided" (''zoppa''), with the Chamber of Deputies dominating the Senate. Laws could be proposed to the Parliament by parliamentarians, ministers, the executive, and the

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

. For a bill to become law, the same text had to be approved by both chambers, in any order (except for matters of taxation and expenditure which had to pass through the Chamber of Deputies first), and receive royal sanction. Thus, the Albertine Statute defined the two chambers of Parliament and the King as the "three legislative powers": if any one of these opposed a bill it would not become law and it could not be proposed again in that parliamentary session. Article 9 of the Albertine Statute gave the king the power of "prorogal of the sessions" (''proroga delle sessioni''). This enabled the king to block all legislative activity in Parliament, without dissolving the Chamber of Deputies, which remained in a state of "suspension" until he recalled it. The king was also empowered to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, but in that case elections had to be held within four months.

References

Bibliography

* Francesco Bartolotta (ed), ''Parlamenti e governi d'Italia dal 1848 al 1970'', Roma, Vito Bianco Ed., 1971. 1848 establishments in the Kingdom of Sardinia 1861 disestablishments in Italy Defunct bicameral legislatures Italian Parliament {{italy-hist-stub