Navigating Disruptive Aadvances in Life Sciences within a 21-st Century Italian-American Constitutional Dialogue: Brief Notes and Simple Remarks

The essay briefly addresses some of the most relevant dynamics emerging at the crossroads between the legal phenomenon and the life sciences. In particular, three sides of this complex prism will be explored: (1) the increasing “multilevel” and “transnational” constitutive dimension of the law applied to new questions posed by the efforts of biosciences, as a consequence of the fact that these sciences do not encounter territorial frontiers; (2) the evolution of the elements used to qualify, in the different legal systems, the juristic personhood, moving beyond the classical boundaries of birth and death of the human being, resulting from new bioengineering advances intervening at the beginning and at the end of human life and in creating synthetic organisms; and (3) the complex rethinking of the fundamental values (in Europe and the U.S.) of autonomy, dignity, and pursuit of happiness facing the powerful capabilities provided by life-sciences in a “disenchanted world”, where both the pluralism of moral thoughts flourish and the individualism respecting one’s life-choices bloom. Finally, from a legal point of view, a short reference will be made to the “social dimension” of the individual choices in the exercise of autonomy rights linked with health behaviors: a “social perspective” once tarnished but now rediscovered as a consequence of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.