L’insegnamento delle conferenze messicane: il giudice quale motore di trasformazione sociale

The paper concerns the contribution given by Calamandrei with the Mexican conferences to the transformative constitutionalism that spread in Latin America. In particular, it dwells on the role of the judge as an engine of social transformation. After a brief introduction on the role of the judge in pre-1944 works, the Author emphasizes the liberal-socialist culture as the matrix of the social justice promised in the Republican Constitution. Secondly, the Author focuses on the inaugural conference of the 1950 International Congress, in which Calamandrei invites us to read the trial in the light of the constitutional principles of the welfare state. The Mexican conferences, in which the judge becomes an engine of social transformation, are then analysed. The paper concludes with an analysis of the legacy of the Mexican conferences in Latin America: the ‘transformative constitutionalism’.