Principles in Constitutional Jurisprudence. The Principle of Human Dignity and the Epistemological Challenges for the Interpreter – Some Brief Reflections on the Recent Case Law of the Italian Constitutional Court

With this work I want to analyze the epistemological difficulties related to the use, by the Constitutional Court, of principles (equality, human dignity, reasonableness, proportionality) as interpretive parameters and basis for their decisions. This modus operandi is open to some difficulties, not least those arising from the difficulty of defining conceptually some of them and from the large margin of discretion related to the introduction of the principles as autonomous sources of decision. In particular we want to focus attention on the interest and on the sensitivity that the constitutional judges – especially the Italian – have expressed to the principle of human dignity, declined as a right to have a free and dignified life. The challenge of this work is also to highlight the difficulties related to the legal definition of human dignity. The compliance with this principle and its invocation as a source of decision can be considered a rule of interpretation useful (if not necessary) to define the so called “hard cases” in which the respect of economic and financial needs is at odds with the need to protect the core of social rights provided in the Constitution.