CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Fuente Bravo, Juan |
|---|---|
| Title | Future Generations in Constitutional Law |
| Summary | The notion of future generations is a particularly interesting area of constitutional law. It is characterized by numerous difficult questions. Who are future generations? Do current generations have any reason to consider their interests, if these are ascertained to exist? How do we identify, and protect, those interests? The research question this project sets itself to answer is what are the characteristics of the legal concept and what are the ways in which they manifest themselves in the constitutional life of a state. The project uses a comparative constitutional law methodology to look at those examples where future generations appear, with the objective of making a comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of the notion in constitutional law. Due to the numerous instances of future generations provisions at the international level, the scope is limited to Member States of the Council of Europe. The analytical part of the project will show that future generations have a lot of constitutional potential, since there is an important number of mentions of responsibility towards them in foundational texts, but the practice remains almost non-existent. The reason for the abyss existing between text and practice will be identified as stemming from the citizen-subject divide and the enforcer-beneficiary divide. These could be considered difficulties, but the paper defends that they should not be seen as barriers for the development of protection—they just force us to look in new places for answers. It is defended in this paper that the state has a ‘duty of care’ for future generations, a commitment that has been clearly established in constitutional texts across Europe. It is further argued that there is no need to frame this protection on human rights terms, since the characteristics of future generations as a subject of law do not fit in appropriately. The ‘duty of care’ is sufficiently well-grounded to serve as a source and mechanism of protection on its own. |
| Supervisor | Ruiz-Chiriboga, Oswaldo |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/fuente-bravo_juan.pdf |
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