Jurisprudence Commons^™

The (Re-) Constitution Of The Public, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article deals with the prospect of public law in global governance. It analyses firstly the foundations of modern public law and considers what is left of them in the global setting. Are they still holding through States’ de-centering practices, detached from the legitimating grounds of the modern ‘idea of publicness’? What is called here the duality of public law (in its State-related political and juridical strands) fades and decouples in the sphere where inherently ‘global’ legalities originate of a deracinated type: the distinctively global ‘public’ only provides a ‘suspended public law’ and politically unsaturated. The Constitution of the Public …

The Rule Of Law In Global Governance: Its Normative Construction, Function And Import, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

What does the Rule of law contribute in the frame of global governance? While addressing metamorphoses of law and the multiple legalities in the global context, this paper shows that the rule of law can consistently be extended externally being cherished internally. It takes seriously the concurrence of different legalities in their diverse ‘formats’, and the challenge of the “global administrative law” theoretical and empirical model. At the meta-level of the relations among legalities, the Rule of law has an essential role to play: it affects interactions and interdependence,and can cause content-dependent assessments to develop, without supporting self-closure or monistic …

The Rule Of Law As An Institutional Ideal, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article aims at offering an innovative interpretation of the potentialities of the "rule of law" for the XXI Century. It goes beyond current uses and the dispute between formal and substantive conceptions, by reaching the roots of the institutional ideal. Also through historical reconstruction and comparative analysis, the core of the rule of law appears to be a peculiar notion, showing a special objective that the law is asked to achieve, on a legal plane, largely independent of political instrumentalism. The normative meaning is elaborated on and construed around the notions of institutional equilibrium, non domination and "duality" of …

Global Threads: Weaving The Rule Of Law And The Balance Of Legal Software, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

The article shows how the global legal sphere attempts to compensate the lack of a system (hardware) and faces the proliferation of legal normativities (software). The author elaborates on the role of the rule of law: after stressing the ambiguities and the contestability of its current uses in the confrontations between legal orders and regulatory regimes, it is explained that the persistence and promise of the rule of law in the global setting depend on the weaving of a set of meta-rules (a special kind of software) developed through various areas and sources of legalities in the international environment. Eventually, …

The Rule Of Law, Democracy, And International Law - Learning From The Us Experience, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

The general issue addressed in this paper is the relation between the rule of law as a matter of national law, and as a matter of international law. Different institutional conceptions of this relationship give rise to different attitudes towards international law. Nonetheless, questions arise that cast doubt on age-old tenets of certain Western countries concerning the radical separability between the rule of law within the domestic system and in the international realm. The article will start considering some recent developments in the United States' treatment of alien detainees. Then it shall address the relation between domestic constitutions and international …

From Human Rights To Fundamental Rights: On The Consequences Of A Conceptual Distinction, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article introduces a peculiar distinction between "human" rights and "fundamental" rights, explaining through diverse areas, the role that the difference can play. Rights are loaded with contrasting properties and burdens, opposing features and values (neutral, pre-political, negotiable, democratic, etc.). On the contrary, we should accept - on one side - human rights as moral visions of what is due to human beings, deontological imperatives, even if abstract. But on the other side we cannot ignore the ethical problems: e.g. those resulting from their blind implementation. We need to enhance the institutional, legal and ethical-political meaning of "fundamental" rights, i.e. …

Rights As Norms And As Ends, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article considers the narratives of law through the lens of the form-substance devide. Different legal theories have provided for opposite definitions of law, legal rules and individual rights, enhancing their identity as due to some substantive content or, on the contrary, to some formal-functional features. The form-substance antinomy reflects both institutional and theoretical reasons. It bears down on the relations envisaged among rights, norms and ends. Different conceptions of rights are best understood as a special articulation of those three terms, and offer different patterns for rights, depending on their relation-opposition with collective ends, ethical values, legislation. The following …

Reasons For Justice, Rights And Future Generations, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article focuses on some very "fundamental threats" to future generations' leaving, and considers whether most essential interests of future persons not to be harmed can be construed as rights, and in particular as human rights, as much as present persons'. The framework refers essentially to a conceptual grammar of justice. Moreover, it is suggested to articulate rights through the lens of "disposability" and "non-disposability" principles. Finally, the article shows the reasons for separating what we owe to future persons under the challenge of those threats for humanity, i.e. a matter of justice, from our right to hand down our …

The Abuse Of Rights And The Rule Of Law, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article deals with the abuse that can be committed in the name of rights and of the rule of law, not against them. It explains the general characteristics of the concept of abuse from a legal point of view, on the part of the holder of a public power or of a right. Moreover, it addresses the way to identify the abuse itself by the means of legal arguments, and principles. Finally, it shows how resorting to the problem of abuse of power has been used as a tool for recognizing the habeas corpus to detainees in Guantanamo by …

Whose Europe? After The Constitution: A Goal Based Citizenship, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article designed the scenario of a constitutional Europe after 2004 and the work of the Convention on a (proposed) Constitution. In particular it elaborated on the philosophical background and legal categorizations of a European citizenship, and exposed its added value and the innovative perspective that it should have prompted.

Arguments In Favour Of A Functional Theory Of Fundamental Rights, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

The article suggests a relational concept of fundamental rights. This concept

enhances the «functional» rôle played by some of the rights in the system of a state

governed by the rule of law, rather than an ethical universality or a substantial content

coinciding with any list of «human» rights. Fundamental rights belong to the fundamental

(ideal, substantice and normative) criteria of recognition/selection of actions and norms in

the institutional/normative practice of a legal order. Given this premise, the work analyses

some relevant issues: universal-fundamental nexus, property rights, liberty rights, social

rights. Fundamental rights refuse any rigid classification which identifies and …