A Small State, a Worldwide Jurisdiction: the Vatican City State and Its Legal System

The legal system of Vatican City has many peculiarities due to the unique nature of this small jurisdiction. Indeed, it is the smallest independent State in the world. It is also a worldwide jurisdiction, dealing with the apical institutions and people of the Catholic Church. Consequently, its legal system cannot ignore the global perspective of more than one billion Catholics throughout the world. Accordingly, it is structured as a three-level model. The first, and most important, reference is to Canon Law, both as a set of legal rules and as a principle of legal interpretation; then, there is the complex body of statutes and regulations directly promulgated by the State; and finally, subject to strict conditions, Italian law. Recently, the system has been subject of numerous regulatory interventions in two fields: economic and financial legislation, and criminal law. New legislation is of particular importance, because it allows us to verify how the law of the Vatican City is inserted in the context of supranational legislation. Moreover, new norms enormously enlarge the competence of the judicial authorities of the State. Actually, they now exercise penal jurisdiction over crimes committed against interests of the Holy See, crimes referred to in new criminal Laws (when they are committed by “public officials” in the exercise of their functions, wherever they are domiciled), and any other crime whose prosecution is required by an international agreement ratified by the Holy See. We can find, then, a confirmation of our initial assumption, relating to the absolute peculiarity of Vatican law: this is a juridical system typical of a small state, but with a global projection and a worldwide jurisdiction.