GIOVANNI MIELE E LA PARABOLA DEL CONTRATTO DI DIRITTO PUBBLICO

This work deals with Giovanni Miele’s contribution, particularly in the 1931 monograph on the expression of the citizens’ will in administrative law, about the disputed hypothesis of contracts having public power as an object. The article put into context Miele’s reflection on “equal bilateral acts” as “administrative law contracts” within the debate on the “public law contract” in the Italian and German scholarship between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century. Miele’s position is of great interest and modernity vis-à-vis the developments that led to the introduction of public-private contracts that substitute or integrate an administrative decision in the Italian general law on administrative procedure. Although for Miele, the rule of law is the basic legitimising principle of administrative powers of command, almost anticipating what will later become the so-called end pursuing legality, he purports that consensus may well constitute a distinct form of legitimation of public power.