Casonato, Carlo

Artificial intelligence (AI) deeply and pervasively impacts our lives. In this short paper, I propose two lines of thoughts aimed at updating the catalog of human rights in light of the potential and risks of AI (mainly Machine Learning). The first considers the adaptation of certain traditional principles (informed consent and nondiscrimination) to the challenges posed by AI. The second covers four new rights, built upon the specific characteristics of AI systems, with the aim of effectively addressing AI pros and cons.

Artificial Intelligence has great potential in all areas of our lives, but it also presents risks for fundamental rights and the rule of law. The European Union is trying to create a balanced regulatory framework between the pros and cons of AI. On 21 April 2021 EU published a comprehensive proposal for an AI regulation, which should protect and promote European rights and values, without impeding the technological, industrial, and commercial development of AI. This article aims to give a first analysis of the proposal, focusing on its main positive and negative aspects.

mio biglietto» 1. Questa la reazione di Ivan ne I fratelli Karamazov di fronte all'ingiustizia assoluta del generale che aveva fatto sbranare dai suoi cani il fanciullo di 8 anni colpevole di aver inavvertitamente colpito con un sasso il suo levriero preferito. Di fronte allo strazio degli innocenti, al dolore dei bambini le reazioni individuali possono esse-re le più diverse a seconda di una molteplicità di variabili che coinvolgono appieno la struttura logica, morale e religiosa della persona. La so-cietà ed il diritto, dal canto loro, possono solo cercare di evitare la concretizzazione del dolore dei fanciulli, promuovendone per quanto possi-bile il miglior interesse. Vi sono peraltro diversi e talvolta opposti modi di ricercare il bene e combattere il male che coinvolge i minori. Le problematiche legate alla configurabilità e alla quantificazione del danno da nascita (nelle ver-sioni del wrongful birth e wrongful life), la disci-plina e i limiti stabiliti per le tecniche di ...

These proceedings are the outcome of an international two-day conference that was held at the University of Trento on 16-17 October 2015. The focus is on the freedom of movement in the European Union, on reproductive rights for LGBTI persons, new legal challenges in the field of gender identity and intersexuality, family issues in private international law, sexual orientation and non-discrimination. - The book and its sections are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). For commercial re-use, please contact Segr.Dir.Ric-SBA@unitn.it

The article presents the results of a comparative research on the sources of law and on the main features any constitutional state should be based on when ruling on life sciences. Facing uncertain and ever-changing scientific outcomes, on the one hand, and the moral importance of every decision to be taken, on the other hand, are very difficult challenges for every legal actor (mainly parliaments and courts) dealing with life sciences. Biolaw in general has to be capable to assure a tailored approach to every single case and to avoid static and fundamentalist approaches while promoting, at the same time, the maximum degree of equality and rationality and a sustainable level of predictability. Basing the reasoning on the very nature of the object to be regulated (i.e. life sciences) the Author singles out the main traits of a biolaw able both to take into account the features of evidences stemmed from life sciences and to promote pluralism and fundamental rights.

The article presents the main legal challenges emerging from the profound changes that the field of biomedical research underwent in recent years. The shift of focus on biological samples and data, the impact of new technologies producing huge amount of data, difficult to be interpreted and processed, the global dimension of research activities and the consequent importance of sharing samples and data and to make them widely accessible represent a fundamental test for the law. The paper critically describes the normative framework designed by the GDPR and the Italian legislation to balance the need to protect participants and the importance of fostering biomedical research. The proposed strategy, giving-up of the "oppositional" point of view and promoting consonances, aims at relaxing the specificity of consent while integrating it with specific requirements to encourage the concept of a responsible research.

Le cronache recenti si interessano sempre più spesso a vicende che riguardano il fine vita. In Italia ha avuto molta risonanza il caso di dj Fabo, subito seguito da quel- lo di Davide Trentini. Ma il tema non ha attirato l’attenzione del pubblico e del mondo politico solo in Italia.

The rapid pace in the progression of life sciences pushes law in one of its most significant intrinsic features: the principle of certainty. While uncertainty and the modifiability of its results are of normal currency in life sciences, they are especially problematic in law, jeopardizing the very essence of equality and non-discrimination. It is also worth mentioning that life sciences work on a very diverse set of materials and cases that usually differ from each other. Any even minimum specific traits of bio-objects must be considered so as to avoid an undifferentiated and therefore unreasonable legal regulation. Law as a codified set of general principles also suffers from this perspective. Taking the above into consideration, this chapter proposes a number of coordinates, which can give biolaw the necessary features to cope with a difficult, ever-changing and very specific dimension of human knowledge—building, in this way, an open, updated and attentive biolaw for 21st Century life sciences.

The article presents and criticizes the ruling n. 84/2016 of the Italian Con-stitutional Court on the research on “left over” human embryos. In particular, the au-thor focuses on the risk that the approach of the Court will lead “ethically sensitive” issues outside the scope of judicial review of legislation.

The article, based on the writings collected in the issue, proposes a constitutionally oriented perspective of artificial intelligence (AI). Dealing with the main potentials and threats of AI, it suggests some constitutional principles as the basis for an effective regulation of the phenomenon, calling for a precise and direct human responsibility.

Il volume raccoglie alcuni dei risultati finali del progetto di ricerca “L’impatto delle innovazioni biotecnologiche sui diritti della persona: uno studio interdisciplinare e comparato”, finanziato dal Ministero dell’Universita e della Ricerca (FIRB 2006). Il volume nasce inoltre dall’opportunita di proporre ed approfondire le linee trasversali esistenti anche tra differenti contributi pubblicati, in momenti diversi, nel sito www.biodiritto.org. La metodologia adottata rispecchia l'approccio interdisciplinare e comparato adottato dal progetto di ricerca, nella sforzo costante di andare oltre i limiti sia della materia giuridica, sia dei singoli ordinamenti nazionali.

The law dealing with life sciences (biolaw) should be characterised by being up-to-date, open to scientific evidence and ethical pluralism and attentive to the particularities of different concrete cases. The article considers the most recent Italian constitutional case-law on end-of-life decisions (ord. 207/2018 and decision 242/2019) in the light of these features, noting many pros and a few cons.

CoViD-19 is producing a number of changes in the meaning of health. In order to protect our health, States have restricted the exercise of many rights: movement, education, work, etc.  Health has thus become a tyrant that crushes all other rights. On the other hand, shortages impose choices for access to intensive care beds, leading to a tragic selection between those who can be treated and those who cannot. In this way, CoViD-19 has denied the health of the excluded. Finally, the pandemic has revealed a condition of great inequality in access to treatment. The article examines these dynamics within a framework of constitutional principles in order to draw lessons for the possible emergence of new pandemics .

Providing legal rules for life sciences is not an easy task. On the one hand, for instance, scientific results change rapidly and new areas for research are continuously emerging. On the other hand, legislative procedures are time-consuming and the law risks to be always late. Scientific complexity and ethical divisiveness are also uneasy to deal with by political bodies and courts, requiring precise and specific expertise. In the light of the tricky relationship between life sciences and the law, the article recommends three features that are supposed to help the law in efficiently cope with contemporary and future scientific challenges: openness, updateness, attentiveness.

The Italian Constitution was written in 1946 and 1947, when the Turing test was not even developed. Yet, a number of principles contained in it can be effectively applied in order to obtain a human-centered Artificial Intelligence. This article deals with a few constitutional principles (democracy, sovereignty, equality, etc.) in order to identify new rights (such as the right to know about the rationale behind the AI decision, the right to know about the artificial or human nature of the entity I am talking with, the right to a decision not based only on automated processing) that can make AI a valuable resource – and not a threat – for individuals and the community.

L’obiettivo principale di questo lavoro consiste nel sottoporre a verifica critica, alla luce di tematiche e di casi specifici, alcune delle categorie che abitualmente si utilizzano nei ragionamenti giuridici dedicati alle questioni di bioetica. La prospettiva da cui condurre l’analisi – non solo a motivo della formazione personale di chi scrive, come si vedra subito – non sara quella della filosofia del diritto, area che finora ha nutrito gran parte della riflessione biogiuridica, ma quella del diritto costituzionale comparato. I principali riferimenti, quindi, non andranno a concetti come verita, bene, natura o verso le teorie dell’utilitarismo, relativismo, neocontrattualismo, principialismo, ecc., ma si rivolgeranno a previsioni costituzionali, a leading cases, a disposizioni normative e ad interpretazioni dottrinali tutte esaminate all’interno di un quadro di riferimento logico-concettuale riconducibile al diritto costituzionale ed al metodo comparato. Il lavoro e stato eseguit...

Front cover: Graphic project based on "Tomba del tuffatore", Paestum, 5 th century b.C., on permission nr. 15/2014 by Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo-Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici di SA, AV, BN e CE. Cover design: Marta Tomasi

Cancer registries are an important part of the public health infrastructure, since they allow to monitor the temporal trends of this illness as well as facilitate epidemiological research. In order to effectively set up such registries, it is necessary to create a system of data collection that permits to record health-related information from patients who are diagnosed with cancer. Given the sensitive nature of such data, it is debated whether their recording should be based on consent or whether alternative arrangements are possible (eg, opt-out systems where information is automatically collected but patients can later withdraw). In the recent reform of the Swiss cancer registration legislation, the lawmaker set out to implement rules about the recording of data in cancer registries that would allegedly go beyond a consent-based model, in order to balance accurate registration with respect of patient rights. However, by analysing the operational norms of the new legislation and c...

BackgroundDigital Pills (DP) are an innovative drug-device technology that permits to combine traditional medications with a monitoring system that automatically records data about medication adherence as well as patients’ physiological data. Although DP are a promising innovation in the field of digital medicine, their use has also raised a number of ethical concerns. These ethical concerns, however, have been expressed principally from a theoretical perspective, whereas an ethical analysis with a more empirically oriented approach is lacking. There is also a lack of clarity about the empirical evidence available concerning the application of this innovative digital medicine.MethodsTo map the studies where DP have been tested on patients and discuss the ethically relevant issues evident therein, we performed a scoping review of the empirical literature concerning DP.ResultsOur search allowed us to identify 18 papers reporting on studies where DP were tested on patients. These included studies with different designs and involving patients with a variety of conditions. In the empirical literature, a number of issues with ethical relevance were evident. At the patient level, the ethical issues include users’ interaction with DP, personal sphere, health-related risks and patients’ benefits. At the provider level, ethically relevant issues touch upon the doctor-patient relationship and the question of data access. At the societal level, they concern the benefits to society, the quality of evidence and the dichotomy device-medicine.ConclusionsWe conclude that evidence concerning DP is not robust and that more research should be performed and study results made available to evaluate this digital medicine. Moreover, our analysis of the ethically relevant aspects within empirical literature underscores that there are concrete and specific open questions that should be tackled in the ethical discussion about this new technological solution.