COVID and Public Law: IACL Convenes a Research Group
CHIARA GRAZIANI IS AMONG THE PROMOTERS OF THE INITIATIVE, WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAWChiara Graziani, an academic fellow at Bocconi Department of Legal Studies, is one of the three conveners of the new "Public Law Responses to Public Health Emergencies" research group, launched by the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL-AIDC).
Established in 1981, IACL-AIDC is the academic society for constitutional law scholars and is structured in a number of research groups that promote the international dialogue on topical subjects.
Graziani studies the legal framework for disaster response and emergency management, a topic widely discussed with regard to the threat of international terrorism. “The pandemic poses serious challenges to governments and constitutions”, she says, “and some of the measures adopted in the fight on COVID raise legal issues that are similar to those deriving from counter-terrorism tools”.
Along with the other two conveners (Oran Doyle, Trinity College Dublin, and Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, Universidade de Brasília), Graziani will initially focus the research group on two streams. The first one is power balance, in a time when governments across the world seem to marginalize parliaments and central and local powers are often in conflict over the measures to adopt. The second one is the use of technologies in an emergency, with all its implications in terms of privacy, data protection and other fundamental rights.
The group is not only open to scholars of emergency law and, in its first steps, it has already attracted the attention of law scholars studying devolution or technologies. “An emergency always calls for an interdisciplinary approach”, Chiara Graziani concludes.
“The establishment of the group”, IACL President Adrienne Stone says, “is a good example of the wide-ranging and creative thinking IACL wants to promote”.
by Fabio Todesco
