Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Keywords
- List of Contributors
- PART I COVID-19 AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
- PART II STATES AGAINST THE PANDEMIC
- PART III COMPENSATION FOR COVID-19 RELATED DAMAGE
- PART IV CONTRACT LAW
- PART V CONSUMER LAW
- PART VI LABOUR AND SOCIAL LAW
- PART VII CORONAVIRUS CHANGING EUROPE
- Epilogue
- Annex: ELI Principles for the COVID-19 Crisis
- About the Editors
Law after the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Fundamental Binomials
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Keywords
- List of Contributors
- PART I COVID-19 AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
- PART II STATES AGAINST THE PANDEMIC
- PART III COMPENSATION FOR COVID-19 RELATED DAMAGE
- PART IV CONTRACT LAW
- PART V CONSUMER LAW
- PART VI LABOUR AND SOCIAL LAW
- PART VII CORONAVIRUS CHANGING EUROPE
- Epilogue
- Annex: ELI Principles for the COVID-19 Crisis
- About the Editors
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic suspended the world and affected the political, social and economic constructions in which we lived. The law cannot be the same. It is necessary to separate the legal legitimacy to create and apply the rule of law and the political legitimacy to create and apply the law. This implies preparing the critique of the current dominant doctrine about the sources of “Law” based on the fundamental binomials posed by the post-COVID-19 situation. Placing State law in the Rule of Law involves confronting installed powers that violate with impunity fundamental rules of law that protect the human person and his/her dignity, by reforming State institutions and by changing mentalities. This goes through the media and journalists, through the courts, judges and lawyers, through the university and the legal profession schools, through the cult of fear and the risk of freedom, through the debate about the constitution.
TELEVISION VERSUS COURTS
In the public debate on “Pandemic Law”, the idea that there is a radical opposition between life and freedom has been made concrete in the binomial collective health versus individual freedom.
Is there a fundamental legal duty of non-mobility of each person, in full constitutional normality,apart from the legal regime of the state of exception?Or is it just a civic duty of citizenship to be responsible in “taking care of others”, without any other censorship than that of the citizen appeal?
Will we go forward to higher levels of legal civility? Will we go back to the legal civility conquered in the past? Or will we return to effective social mechanisms of personal censorship, typical of medieval obscurantism, 4outside the law and the courts?
Has the history of the nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege rule already been forgotten? In the absence of an express rule that imposes social isolation, State bodies with elected office holders that cannot intervene to guarantee the behaviour of citizens in the sense of isolation, are shifting censorship of these behaviours from the law to the “social agents”.
So, those who do not behave in a proper manner are exposed to social censorship, broadcast by the mass media (media alarmism) and legitimised by the “TV station commentators”, often faithful to scientific idolatry. They are often identified as bad citizens, socially irresponsible and the target of public disapproval and even physical violence by the “COVID militias”.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Coronavirus and the Law in Europe , pp. 1119 - 1136Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2021