Insatiable Rights

The essay criticises Ferrajoli's ideas about political democracyand the relationship between it and fundamental rights. Thedefinition of `substantial democracy' furnished by Ferrajoliis considered inopportune, because it claims to provide a semanticsolution to the normative problem of the limits of content ofdemocratic decisions. Ferrajoli is also criticised for equatingconstitutions with the social contract, with the result thatthe functioning of political democracy is tied to unanimousconsent and constitutions are treated as eternal. Finally, theauthor argues that treating the lack of guarantees of fundamentalrights in a legal order as a technical gap is tantamount toconceiving rights and their guarantees as something preordainedto positive law and subtracting them from the democraticlegislator's political decisions.