Suchergebnisse

The advent of Internet, as a new super-powered communication technology, has a huge impact on human thinking, therefore, on social relationships and, at the end, on law. Specifically, Internet plays a double interaction with the realm of constitutional law: on the one hand, it is a new powerful tool to pursue constitutional aims (a new way to define, control and regulate power); on the other, it is a new object of the constitutional law (a new power to be defined, controlled, and regulated). This phenomenon has been acutely defined as the ambivalence of "technocratic paradigm". The initial hypothesis of the relation Internet-Constitutional Law has been that of a "linear" proportion, that is: the more Internet grows, the more Democracy and Citizenship equally grow. The paper suggests some research paths - both on "Internet-Democracy" and on "Internet-Citizenship" sides - proving the inconsistency of that hypothesis. "Constitutional crowdsourcing" experiments, web tools for participatory democracy; social-media as factors of political mobilization, are all cases showing ambivalent/ambiguous results: technology can be a strong growth factor for democratic advancement and constitutional participation, but it triggers equally strong counter-forces. The rise of the doctrine of "cyber-sovereignty", as a reaction to the freedom of cyber space, the powerful constitutional resilience of the "classical" representative institutions when challenged by new Internet-based participatory channels (whether through constitutional crowdsourcing or participatory democracy), the compound nature of the new "Right to Internet" and, finally, the shifting role of social media in the political mobilization, are as many good examples of a "non-linear" relation between Internet and Constitutional Law. This ambivalence of technology requires a new reasonable and precautionary regulation, beyond the binary option: absolute prohibition/absolute freedom. The paper claims for a different multidisciplinary research approach, able to combine traditional legal tools with ethical guidelines and moral directions ("normative crescendo").

Este artículo analiza el impacto de las medidas adoptadas en el contexto de la lucha contra la crisis económica en los sistemas de gobierno en general y el italiano en particular. Concretamente, se realiza una crítica de la mutación del sistema de gobierno derivada de los mecanismos de implementación de estas medidas

This article advances the hypothesis that the European constitution has to be considered a 'space': that in addition to the 'classical' judicial and political dimensions, there is a third constitutional dimension – the civic. A distinctive feature of European political thought and constitutional practice is that public authority has always been coupled with an autonomous 'civil sphere' and that social formations and their rights, as individuals, pre-existed the nation-state. The totalitarian 'trauma' between the two world wars, and the decisive role political parties played in it, produced the idea, rooted in the very origin of the European Treaties, that representative democracy must be complemented by social or corporative representation/participation. This article analyses European primary law, finding two subsequent 'constitutionalization waves'. This leads to the conclusion that there is in fact a 'corpus juris' (concerning the 'social dialogue', the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the Commission's consultations, the European Citizen's Initiative (ECI), lobbying) expressing this third civic dimension of the European constitution. This conclusion does not claim that each of the three dimensions is currently equally equipped and effective: it ranges from a highly developed legal/judicial dimension, to a weaker-but-growing institutional/political dimension, and eventually to an embryonic-almost-non-existent social/civic dimension.

Throughout Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's pontificate he spoke to a range of political, civil, academic, and other cultural authorities. These speeches reveal a striking sensitivity to the fundamental problems of law, justice, and democracy. He often presented a call for Christians to address issues of public ethics such as life, death, and family from what they have in common with other fellow citizens: reason. This book discusses the speeches in which the Pope Emeritus reflected most explicitly on this issue, along with commentary from distinguished legal scholars. It responds to Benedict's invitation to engage in public discussion on the limits of positivist reason in the domain of law from his address to the Bundestag. Although the topics of each address vary, they are joined by a series of core ideas whereby Benedict sketches, unpacks, and develops an organic and coherent way to formulate a 'public teaching' on justice and law

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures and tables -- Contributors -- Chapter 1: Introduction. Dialogue as a Method -- 1.1: Relationality as the hallmark of the Italian Style of constitutional adjudication -- 1.2: Relationality revisited -- 1.2.1: Relationality vs. weakness: perception and reality -- 1.2.2: Relationality "unpacked" -- 1.2.3: Official vs. Unofficial relationality -- 1.3: Dialogue as a method -- 1.4: Relationality and constitutional pluralism -- Dialogue I: Constitutional Courts and Legal Scholarship -- Chapter 2: Je T'aime … Moi Non Plus: Some Considerations on (and Impressions of) the Relationships between Constitutional Justice and Legal Scholarship -- 2.1: The difficulties encountered during research -- 2.2: The semi-direct sources -- 2.3: The indirect sources -- 2.4: Implied sources -- 2.5: Reasons (and prospects) for the absence of direct sources -- 2.6: An impression, not a conclusion -- Chapter 3: The Wasp and the Orchid: Constitutional Justice and Legal Scholarship Need Each Other -- 3.1: The influence of legal scholarship on constitutional justice -- 3.1.1: Semi-direct sources -- 3.1.2: Indirect sources -- 3.1.3: Implied sources -- 3.2: The perception of constitutional justice by legal scholarship -- 3.2.1: The perception of the constitutional court itself -- 3.2.2: The perception of constitutional case law -- 3.3: The destinies of constitutional justice and legal scholarship are more intertwined than ever before -- Dialogue II: Open and Closed Forms of Constitutional Adjudication -- Chapter 4: Openness and Transparency in Constitutional Adjudication: Amici Curiae, Third-Party Intervention, and Fact-Finding Powers -- 4.1: The legislative and autonomous framework -- 4.2: Third-parties and amici curiae: case-law and scholarly debate.