La disciplina costituzionale delle situazioni giuridiche soggettive di svantaggio: spunti ricostruttivi in prospettiva comparata

The article originates from the recent re-flourishing of the Italian and foreign juridical literature about the constitutional duties. Firstly, it tries to individualize the reasons that appear mostly suitable to justify the revival of the “sense of duty” and of “civic morals”. The paper also reviews, in a comparative and diachronic perspective, the constitutional dispositions on duties that are in the constitutionals texts from the revolutions of the end of the eighteenth century to the liberal age and the democratic and pluralistic State. The comparative approach of the study of the duties, omitted until now, is a good starting point to identify the intensity degree in the receipt and circulation of ideas and principles between Europe and America and it also formulates some conclusions about the evolution of the nature of duties and their possible replacement in the juridical contemporary contexts. This analysis shows from the one hand, the progressive increase of duties (so much that we can see a sort of duties generations) within the constitutional texts and perceives, on the other hand (in virtue of the expressions used by the contemporary constituents), the possible weakening of the clauses of duties contained in the Constitutions. The article also individualizes in the legislator and, above all, in the constitutional judge, the subjects who hold the duty to establish the meaning of the constitutional dispositions related to the duties discipline.[...]