Luigi Ferrajoli is undoubtedly the legal theorist who, after Hans Kelsen and Norberto Bobbio, has devoted the greatest intellectual energies to philosophical reflection on democracy. The object of this reflection, contained in his intense scientific production and systematized in Principia iuris, is the peculiar form of democracy established in the main countries of continental Europe in the second postwar period.
But, unlike the work of Kelsen and Bobbio, in that of Ferrajoli the theory of democracy is closely connected with the theory of law, from which it takes the lexicon and the categories. It is a legal theory of democracy, focused on highlighting the differential character of the current constitutional orders: the positioning at the top of the normative system of rigid constitutions, guaranteed by means of jurisdictional bodies in charge of sanctioning their violations. The problem of the validity of legal norms thus acquires a central relevance in the theoretical construction of the normative paradigm of constitutional democracy.
The texts gathered in this volume are organized into the three main axes of "Constitutionalism and democracy", "Fundamental rights and goods" and "Liberty and equality". Thus, they conclude with the valuation of the iura paria (according to Ciceron's expression), of those "equal rights" which are the fundamental rights that all have in common and which determine belonging to the same political community.