The project of a global constitutionalism as a realistic alternative to a catastrophic future

Lecture given by the godfather of the annual graduating class of the Faculty of Law on the feast of San Raimundo de Peñafort

Abstract

The most important problems facing humanity are of a global nature: global warming, threats to world peace, increasing inequalities, lack of drinking water, basic foodstuffs and essential medicines, or the masses of migrants fleeing the misery and degradation of their countries. These tragedies are neither natural phenomena nor simple injustices; on the contrary, they are massive violations of the fundamental rights recognised in the various constitutional charters in force, both national and supranational. Humanity today finds itself at a historic crossroads, surely the most dramatic and decisive: either to suffer and succumb to the multiple catastrophes and global emergencies, or to confront them, counteracting them with the construction of constitutional guarantees on a planetary scale, designed by legal and political reason. Only an Earth Constitution that introduces a planetary domain for the protection of the vital goods of nature, bans all weapons as illicit goods, starting with nuclear weapons, and introduces a global treasury and adequate institutions to guarantee the defence of freedom rights and the enforcement of social rights, can make the universalism of human rights a reality. The project of an Earth Constitution is not a utopian hypothesis, but the only rational and realistic response capable of limiting the savage powers of states and markets for the benefit of the habitability of the planet and the survival of humanity