000138RA - CONSTITUTIONAL STATE AND DIGITAL SOCIETY A

The introductory part of the course will focus on highlighting the implications, and particularly the risks, that the growing use of new digital technologies and artificial intelligence poses for the protection of constitutional values, namely, fundamental rights and democracy. The analysis will allow us to understand how these risks, attributable to certain characteristics of these technologies, and more generally the emergence of new private powers in the "digital society" generate unique and unprecedented challenges for constitutionalism, requiring adequate responses at the jurisdictional and, above all, regulatory levels. We will then describe and compare the solutions proposed in the legal systems of the United States and the European Union, taking care to highlight the evolution of the two models (American and European) starting from the constitutional coordinates of each; the role of the courts and the legislature in determining this evolution; and the diversity of the approaches adopted and the outcomes achieved so far. The European model will be the subject of a particularly in-depth study, aimed at critically examining the regulatory techniques and tools envisaged by legislative interventions adopted over the last decade, implementing a comprehensive strategy aimed at combining the objectives of developing the single market and promoting technological innovation with the protection of fundamental rights and democracy. From this perspective, the main European legislative acts that aim to regulate, through uniform rules, the use of new technologies in the digital society will be examined (regulations on personal data protection; liability of digital service intermediaries, combating disinformation and illegal content online; digital services and online content moderation; guarantees of fairness and contestability in digital markets; artificial intelligence). The analysis will highlight some general aspects (approaches and organizational choices common to the various measures, cross-cutting themes), the specificities of each act, and ultimately the strengths and weaknesses of the strategy adopted by the EU in response to the aforementioned constitutional challenges. With reference to the national level (Italian legal system), the most significant jurisprudential guidelines and the salient aspects of the legislative interventions "implementing" European legislation will be considered.