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After the discovery that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous atthe center of stellar spheroids and that their mass Mbh, in the range 10^6-10^9Msun, is tightly related to global properties of the host stellar system, theidea of the co-evolution of elliptical galaxies and of their SMBHs has become acentral topic of modern astrophysics. Here, I summarize some consequences thatcan be derived from the galaxy Scaling Laws (SLs) and present a coherentscenario for the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies and theircentral SMBHs, focusing in particular on the establishment and maintenance oftheir SLs. In particular, after a first observationally based part, thediscussion focuses on the physical interpretation of the Fundamental Plane.Then, two important processes in principle able to destroy the galaxy and SMBHSLs, namely galaxy merging and cooling flows, are analyzed. Argumentssupporting the necessity to clearly distinguish between the origin andmaintenance of the different SLs, and the unavoidable occurrence of SMBHfeedback on the galaxy ISM in the late stages of galaxy evolution (whenelliptical galaxies are sometimes considered as ``dead, red objects''), arethen presented. At the end of the paper I will discuss some implications of therecent discovery of super-dense ellipticals in the distant Universe. Inparticular, I will argue that, if confirmed, these new observations would leadto the conclusion that at early epochs a relation between the stellar mass ofthe galaxy and the mass of the central SMBH should hold, consistent with thepresent day Magorrian relation, while the proportionality coefficient betweenMbh and the scale of velocity dispersion of the hosting spheroids should besignificantly smaller than that at the present epoch.

Co-evolution of elliptical galaxies and their central black holes. Clues from their scaling laws