Italian Citizenship · Judicial Route

The 1948 Case: Italian Citizenship Through the Judicial Route

This page is informational only and is not legal advice. The 1948 case is an active legal proceeding in Italian civil court — consult a licensed Italian citizenship attorney for guidance specific to your situation.

Last verified: September 7, 2026 · Maintained by The Next Passport (Warner Creates LLC). Venue, evidence and court-fee rules re-read on 2026-09-07 on the consolidated in-force text at normattiva.it (D.L. 13/2017 artt. 1, 3 and 4; D.Lgs. 150/2011 art. 19-bis; D.L. 36/2025; DPR 115/2002 art. 13); the Constitutional Court’s Sentenza 63/2026 was read as the full 30-page judgment, and the 1975 and 1983 rulings in Normattiva’s own amendment notes to Law 555/1912.

Read this before the rest of the page: the 2025 restriction reaches judicial claims too

Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 — inserted by Decree-Law 36/2025 (in force March 29, 2025) and converted with amendments by Law 74/2025 (in force May 24, 2025) — derogates expressly from the 1912 provisions a 1948 case litigates, and saves a judicial claim only where it was filed by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025. The Constitutional Court upheld Article 3-bis in Sentenza 63/2026 on a referral that was itself a pre-1948 maternal-line claim. If your claim was not on file by the cut-off, the remaining route is one of Article 3-bis's ancestor conditions, not the 1948 case as a way around it. Two things are still open: the EU-law question the Constitutional Court referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union on July 23, 2026 (Ordinanza 147/2026), which suspends those proceedings but leaves Article 3-bis in force, and the position of applicants who began the consular process without a confirmed appointment by the cut-off, which Sentenza 63/2026 expressly reserved. Track developments on the legal updates page →

The '1948 case' (caso 1948) is an Italian judicial proceeding that lets descendants of female Italian ancestors claim citizenship that was blocked by pre-constitutional gender discrimination. Before Italy's 1948 Constitution came into force, Italian citizenship could only be transmitted through the paternal line — women who held Italian citizenship could not pass it to their children.

The Corte Costituzionale dismantled that discrimination in two rulings, and it is worth keeping them apart. Sentenza 87/1975 struck Article 10, third paragraph of Law 555/1912 — the provision under which a woman lost Italian citizenship simply by marrying a foreigner whose nationality passed to her. Sentenza 30/1983 then struck Article 1 no. 1, in the part where it failed to provide that the child of a citizen mother is also a citizen by birth. It is the 1983 ruling that addresses transmission, which is why the Cassazione always cites the pair together. The Sezioni Unite (n. 4466/2009) established the procedural consequence: descendants can petition an Italian civil court to have the citizenship recognized, because the administrative consular route cannot reach a line that depends on those rulings.

The triggering condition is specific: a female Italian ancestor in your direct line must have had a child born before January 1, 1948. It is the child's birth date that matters, not the female ancestor's birth date or the date of Italian emigration.

How the 1948 judicial process works

1
Establish the triggering condition. Confirm that a female Italian-citizen ancestor in your direct line had a child born before January 1, 1948. Map the full generation chain from the Italian ancestor to yourself, identifying each female-to-child link and the child's exact birth date.
2
Gather genealogical documents. Collect birth, marriage, and death certificates for every person in the chain. US documents require an apostille and certified Italian translation. Italian ancestor documents must be requested from the comune of origin. Since March 29, 2025 this step carries more weight than it used to: Article 19-bis(2-ter) of Legislative Decree 150/2011 puts the burden on the claimant to plead and prove the absence of every statutory cause of non-acquisition or loss, and Article 19-bis(2-bis) makes an oath and witness testimony inadmissible in citizenship-status proceedings. A documentary gap can no longer be filled by someone testifying to what happened — so a negative record (a certificate that no naturalization was found, for instance) is now part of the file rather than a nice-to-have.
3
Engage an Italian citizenship attorney. You must be represented by an avvocato admitted before the competent Italian tribunale. The attorney prepares the ricorso (formal petition), sources any missing Italian records, and represents you at the hearing.
4
File the ricorso. Venue is assigned by statute, not chosen. For a claimant living abroad, the case goes to the specialised immigration section at the Court of Appeal seat, assigned by the comune of birth of the Italian father, mother or grandparent, under Art. 4(5) of Decree-Law 13/2017, for proceedings begun from 22 June 2022, and it is heard by the specialised immigration section covering that comune — those sections sit only at the ordinary tribunals in the seats of the Courts of Appeal. This has applied to proceedings begun from June 22, 2022.
5
Hearing and decree. The court schedules a hearing. In uncontested cases, the judge may issue a decree without an in-person appearance. In contested cases (where the Ministero dell'Interno opposes), hearings may be more involved. The court's decreto is the legal recognition of citizenship.
6
Register with the comune and consulate. Once the decreto is issued, the citizenship is registered with the relevant Italian comune. You can then apply for an Italian passport through the Italian consulate covering your US state of residence.

Check whether you need the 1948 judicial route

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Frequently asked questions

What is the 1948 case (caso 1948) in Italian citizenship?

The '1948 case' is a judicial proceeding in Italian civil court used when a female Italian ancestor in your direct line had a child born before January 1, 1948. Under Italy's pre-constitutional citizenship laws, only men could transmit Italian citizenship — women could not. Two Constitutional Court rulings dismantled that, and they are not interchangeable: Sentenza 87/1975 struck the rule that a woman lost Italian citizenship by marrying a foreigner (Art. 10, third paragraph of Law 555/1912), while Sentenza 30/1983 struck Art. 1 no. 1 'in the part where it does not provide that the child of a citizen mother is also a citizen by birth' — that second ruling is the one about transmission. The Cassazione Sezioni Unite (n. 4466/2009) then established the mechanism for asserting it in court. The result is a constitutional, court-based path to citizenship recognition that operates parallel to and separately from the standard administrative consular route.

When exactly is the 1948 judicial route required?

You need the 1948 judicial route when both of the following are true: (1) a female ancestor in your direct line from Italy to you held Italian citizenship, and (2) her child — the next person in your descent chain — was born before January 1, 1948. The triggering date is the child's birth date, not the female ancestor's. Multiple female links in a long chain are each evaluated independently — if any female ancestor had a child born before 1948, that link requires the judicial route.

Which Italian court handles 1948 cases?

Not a general civil court, and not one you choose. Citizenship-status claims belong to the specialised sections for immigration, international protection and free movement of EU citizens (Art. 3(2), Decree-Law 13/2017), and those sections exist only at the ordinary tribunals sitting in the seats of the Courts of Appeal (Art. 1(1) of the same decree) — so there is no 'tribunale of your ancestor's comune' to file in. Which of those sections gets your case is assigned by statute: Art. 4(5) of Decree-Law 13/2017, as amended by Law 206/2021, provides that 'when the claimant resides abroad, actions to establish Italian citizenship are assigned by reference to the comune of birth of the Italian father, mother or grandparent.' That rule applies to proceedings begun from June 22, 2022 — the 180th day after Law 206/2021 entered into force on December 24, 2021 (Art. 1(37)). The 2022 Cartabia reform is a separate change: it altered the procedure used (from the rito sommario to the rito semplificato, with effect from February 28, 2023), not the venue. One thing the statute does not resolve: it names father, mother or grandparent, so where the qualifying ancestor is further back than a grandparent the assignment rule's own text does not say where the case goes.

How long does a 1948 judicial case take?

First check whether the route is open to you at all: Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 treats a person born abroad who holds another citizenship as never having acquired Italian citizenship, and one of its saving conditions is a judicial claim filed by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. If your claim was not on file by then — and the same cut-off covers a consular or comune application already made, or an appointment the office had already communicated to you — you need one of the two conditions that carry no deadline instead — a parent or grandparent who holds, or held at death, exclusively Italian citizenship, or a parent or adopter with two continuous years of residence in Italy after acquiring citizenship and before your birth or adoption. Where a case is on file, a 1948 case duration is not published — by any tribunale, by the Ministry of Justice, or by ISTAT. The closest official statistic is 1,304 days, the 2025 ISTAT Disposition Time for «diritti della cittadinanza» in the ordinary tribunali — 365 × (cases pending at year end ÷ cases resolved that year), and it needs three caveats: it is an estimator built from the ratio of pending to resolved cases rather than a measurement of any case; «diritti della cittadinanza» covers all citizenship litigation, not only 1948 cases; and it is a national figure for the ordinary tribunals, while these cases are assigned to the specialised immigration sections at Court-of-Appeal seats by the ancestor's comune of birth, for filings from June 22, 2022. The same ISTAT release gives the reason the number is the worst of any subject matter: the 2025 clearance rate for «diritti della cittadinanza» is 0.76, meaning fewer cases were resolved than were filed. What is not in dispute is the shape of the process: a ricorso (formal petition), a hearing, and a decree (decreto), with some cases contested by the Ministero dell'Interno, which extends timelines.

Does the 2025 descent restriction apply to 1948 cases?

The honest answer changed in 2026, and it is less favourable than the framing you will still see elsewhere. The restriction is Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992, inserted by Decree-Law 36 of March 28, 2025 (in force March 29) and converted with amendments by Law 74/2025 (in force May 24) — the cut-off inside the rule itself is 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025. Three things now point the same way. First, Article 3-bis opens by derogating expressly from Articles 1, 2, 7, 10, 12 and 19 of Law 555/1912 — which are the very provisions a 1948 case litigates. Second, its saving condition (b) preserves a judicially established status only where the judicial claim was filed by the cut-off, so the legislature plainly contemplated court claims rather than leaving them outside. Third, and most directly: the Constitutional Court's Sentenza 63/2026 (decided March 11, deposited April 30, 2026) came up from the Tribunale di Torino in a claim whose genealogy ran through 'a female ancestor, married to a foreign citizen, with whom she had had a child before the promulgation of the current 1948 Constitution' — the referring judge recorded that under the earlier law the claim would have been well founded, applied Article 3-bis to it anyway, and the Court upheld Article 3-bis (the questions under Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution and under EU law were declared unfounded; the treaty-based questions inadmissible). What is genuinely still open is narrower than 'does the cap reach 1948 cases': the Constitutional Court referred the EU-law question to the Court of Justice of the European Union on July 23, 2026 (Ordinanza 147/2026), which suspends those proceedings but leaves Article 3-bis in force, and Sentenza 63/2026 expressly reserved the position of applicants who began the consular process without receiving a confirmed appointment by the cut-off. Consult a licensed Italian citizenship attorney about your specific situation.

Do I need an Italian attorney to pursue the 1948 judicial route?

Yes. You cannot file the ricorso in Italian civil court pro se — you must be represented by an avvocato admitted to practice before the competent tribunale. Italian citizenship attorneys, based in Italy or in the US, handle these cases and can source the required Italian records, prepare the legal filings, and represent you at the hearing. On cost, separate the part that is published from the part that is not. Published: the court filing fee (contributo unificato) for a citizenship-status action is €600, and Art. 13(1-sexies) of Presidential Decree 115/2002 states the unit in words — 'the contribution is owed for each claimant party, even if the claim is brought jointly in the same proceeding', so a four-person filing owes €2,400 — plus a flat €27 advance on court clerical costs (Art. 30), owed once per proceeding however many people are named. Not published: legal fees. Italy abolished binding lawyer tariffs in 2012 (Decree-Law 1/2012, art. 9). What replaced them, the parametri in Ministerial Decree 55/2014, is what a judge uses to liquidate a fee — art. 5 co. 2 does reach fees «a carico del cliente» — but it does not set what a firm may agree with you, and nobody surveys the fees actually agreed, so any single range you are shown is one practice's own quoting rather than a measured figure. Ask two or three firms for a written quote and compare what each includes — in particular whether sourcing the Italian records is inside the quote or billed on top.

What is the difference between the 1948 case and the standard consular route?

The standard consular route is an administrative process: you gather documents, book an appointment at the Italian consulate covering your US state of residence, and a consular officer reviews your file. The 1948 judicial route is a court proceeding: an attorney files a petition, a judge reviews the case, and a court issues a decree. The judicial route requires legal representation and carries its own fees — but it is the only path when the female-ancestor / pre-1948-child condition applies, because a consular officer cannot resolve a line that depends on a constitutional ruling. Neither route has a published duration, so we do not tell you one is faster than the other. And the two are not on different sides of the 2025 restriction: Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 derogates from the 1912 provisions a 1948 case turns on and treats a judicial claim as saved only if it was filed by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025.

Through Your Mother (Born Before 1948) →

Specific ancestor-path guide for the mother-born-before-1948 line.

Italian Citizenship Processing Times →

How the judicial timeline compares to the consulate appointment wait and consular processing — the three clocks explained, and why none of them has an official figure.

Italian Citizenship Legal Updates →

Track the July 2026 Sezioni Unite minor-issue rulings and the Corte Costituzionale's July 23, 2026 referral of the Article 3-bis question to the EU Court of Justice (still pending).

Not affiliated with the Italian government, any consulate, or any citizenship attorney. Information sourced from published decisions of the Corte Costituzionale, Corte di Cassazione, and Italian government sources. This is a rapidly evolving area of law — verify with a licensed attorney. As of September 7, 2026.