After Ruling 63/2026: What the Corte di Cassazione Can Still Do

The day after Ruling 63/2026, attorney Marco Mellone filed an urgent brief with the Sezioni Unite of the Corte di Cassazione. Two cases pending, two courts now pointing in different directions, and one question the Constitutional Court deliberately left unanswered.

This is where things stand.

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Two courts, two different questions

The Constitutional Court answers one question: does this law respect the Italian Constitution? Last Thursday it answered yes — Law 74/2025 is not unconstitutional.

The Corte di Cassazione answers something else entirely. It interprets how ordinary law applies to specific facts. Which statute governs which cases. Whether a provision can reach back and affect a legal situation that was already complete before the law existed.

These are not the same question. The Constitutional Court’s answer on Thursday does not bind the Corte di Cassazione on Friday.

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The argument Mellone put in writing

The Sezioni Unite of the Corte di Cassazione have said, consistently, for more than twenty years: the right to Italian citizenship by descent is imprescrittibile. Permanent. No statute of limitations. Enforceable at any time.

Mellone’s brief builds on exactly that. If the right legally existed from birth — not from the moment you filed a claim, but from birth — then a deadline imposed in March 2025 cannot retroactively reach back and extinguish something that was already done.

The distinction is between constitutionality — addressed on Thursday — and applicability — which the Sezioni Unite have not ruled on in the context of Law 74/2025. Not yet.

He went further. If the Joint Divisions were to protect pending cases only because they were filed before March 27, they would implicitly validate the deadline itself. That would put the Sezioni Unite in direct contradiction with their own precedent — which is precisely the contradiction Mellone’s brief puts in front of the court.

I have been following these proceedings since the interlocutory order of May 27, 2025. What Mellone submitted on Friday is not a long shot. It is a formally raised legal question, properly documented, now pending before the highest civil court in Italy. The Constitutional Court — paragraph 9.1 of Ruling 63/2026 — left open the position of those who had initiated a recognition procedure without receiving a formal appointment by the deadline. The Sezioni Unite will have to say something about that.

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What the ruling actually left open

Sentenza 63/2026 introduced a distinction: for persons born abroad, the citizenship right, while originating at birth, «necessarily requires an administrative or judicial recognition proceeding, absent which they do not enjoy the regime applicable to Italian citizens.»

That addresses the abstract constitutional structure. It does not answer whether a right factually complete before March 2025 — the full descent chain, no voluntary renunciation, the birth itself — can be cut off by a deadline imposed afterward. That is an interpretive question. It belongs to ordinary courts.

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If your first-instance claim resulted in a denial, remember that a Tribunal judgment is not final. You can request a complete second-instance legal review. Explore the process for filing a Corte d’Appello appeal against a citizenship denial.

What comes next

The Sezioni Unite are currently seized of the matter through Ordinance 2123/2025. The June hearings will be the first occasion for any court to engage with these arguments post-Sentenza 63/2026.

I will not predict the outcome. What I can say: the argument has been raised, documented, and is formally pending. The answer will set the practical limits of Law 74/2025 for every case that follows.

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If you have a pending jure sanguinis case, book a consultation here. I review situations individually — the variables matter.

I also covered this in a short video — watch it here.