CfP: Quaderni costituzionali - The Environmental Protection in the Constitution

 “Quaderni costituzionali” – Italian Journal of Constitutional Law invites submissions for the 13th edition of the competition - Call for articles on “The Environmental Protection in the Constitution”

Environmental protection, in its multiple declinations, is the object of several norms and legal commitments of European and international law. In the prevalence of values of economic nature and in the application of questionable scientific evidence, these tools find significant obstacles to their enforcement. In this regard, it appears appropriate to question whether the Italian Constitution still has an autonomous role to play or, rather, it should be considered outdated when it comes to the protection of the environment. In their manuscripts, applicants are thus asked to express their views on the following hypotheses.

1. Is the Italian Constitution irremediably affected by an anthropocentric paradigm (likewise by other cultural traits dominant at the time it was drafted) that prevents an autonomous and fully-fledged consideration of the theme of “nature” – as the textual references to “landscape” (Article 9 Const.) and “social utility” (Article 41(2) Const.) may suggest?

2. Can the text of the Italian Constitution be amended for what concerns the protection of the environment so as to guarantee a balance between the values enshrined in it, when such balance is preferable to what is ensured at supranational and international levels?

3. Can the Italian Constitution, as it stands, be invoked as the basis for the adoption of a series of general, more incisive, or alternative measures than those currently in force?

Applicants can then answer one or more of the following questions:

a) what is the most appropriate conceptualization of the value of the “environment” from a constitutional law perspective, once it is separated from the value of “protection of health”? Building upon Article 2 Const., the “environment” can be understood from a fundamental right perspective, e.g. the right to a good quality of life, rights of the future generations; by contrast, health care protection can be analysed in terms of solidarity duties, e.g. solidarity towards the citizens, other inhabitants on the earth, future generations, the ecosystem and other living beings.

b) What is the legal regime to be applied to the environment and to its many components? In particular, is it sufficient to place the environment amongst the public economic assets enshrined in Article 42 Const. (but for the need to rediscover its authentic meaning, almost distorted by the processes of economization and of privatization), or a new and more appropriate positioning can be envisaged to enhance the right of everyone to its enjoyment and the individual duty to preserve it?

c) According to the Constitution, can the management and the protection of environmental goods be assigned to NGOs and to local communities (as is already the case for the so-called “collective domains”) or is it preferable to resort to the shared management grounded in a “pact” between the territorial entity and the citizens (Article 118, last para. Const.), a practice already followed at local level?

All manuscripts must comply with the editorial guidelines of the Journal and available under the section “Informazioni per i collaboratori” of each issue. They must be written in Italian, cannot exceed 80.000 characters (spaces and footnotes included), and shall be submitted to the Editorial Committee by 15 January 2021 by sending the relevant file to Chiara Bologna (quadernicostituzionali@mulino.it). All manuscripts will be subject to blind peer review by a selection panel composed of members of the Board of Directors and of the Editorial Committee. In addition to having the article published in the Journal, the winner of the competition will be awarded a five-year free subscription to the Journal. The panel may consider other articles for publication on the Journal “Quaderni costituzionali”.

The text of the call for articles, in Italian, is available here.