L’età dei diritti al tempo del Covid-19: alcune riflessioni sull’incidenza della pandemia nella tutela interna e internazionale dei diritti fondamentali dell’uomo

The age of rights represents one of the highest points in the evolution of Western legal civilization: after the affirmation of the liberal state of law with negative freedoms and the subsequent affirmation of Welfare state with positive rights (social rights), especially the institution of the UN has determined the so called internationalization of fundamental human rights, with a progressive erosion of sovereignty by the State in this matter, by many international conventions of character universal and regional, including the ECHR. To date, the coexistence of negative freedoms (including the personal freedom, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement) and the so-called social rights (right to education, right to work, right to health) was based on a strenuous balance of the same, by both the international courts and, especially in Italy, for their constant intervention and targeted by the Constitutional Court. The sudden worldwide spread of the Covid-19 pandemic determined, in the West, a rupture of this fragile balance, with many national governments, including the Italian one, which have limited and still limit personal freedoms (in Italy especially free circulation guaranteed by article 16 of the Constitution) for the safeguarding of a right considered inalienable and prevalent: public health. The pandemic that today sees humanity afflicted by constraints, impositions, limitations may, however, represent a positive turning point for the West: resolving definitively the contrast between freedom and social rights, which is then the reflection of the contrast individualism/collectivism, or if you want liberalism/socialism, and thus achieve a balance stable and lasting in which social rights take on the rank of parameter of evaluation of freedoms.