Medical liability and human rights in Italian private law : legal interpretation as a vehicle for social justice

Abstract

The subject of fundamental rights is currently at the centre of an intense review process aimed at highlighting the potential for its expansion in all fields of the legal order. In fact, the recognition of the supreme values of the person has been formalised by the provisions of the 1948 Constitution, with the consequence that these same values have acquired a specific normative importance. In such a manner, fundamental rights have officially been introduced in the hierarchy of the sources of law, thus becoming available to the interpreter when providing the discipline for individual juridical relationships subject to his judgement. In the various European systems, this process has been given a significant thrust forward with the promulgation of the Lisbon Treaty, which attributed an immediate normative strength to inviolable rights, which had already been recognised in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union signed at Nice on the 7th December 2000. Therefore, in the current context, such righ,ts represent the common denominator of the legal order and these find their point of unison in the primacy of the person. [Excerpt]