Abstract

With an innovative decision technique (previously a kind of “mandamusµ to the legislator, later an ordinary ruling) the italian Constitutional Court elaborated the circumstances of a justifiable (doctor-) assisted suicide. It is a jurisprudential innovation, however not in break but in continuity with the leading cases on the topic of criminal justifications. Particularly the Author demonstrates that the concept of subjective dignity is recurring in the precedents of the Court of Cassation while the concepts of conscience, life and death are differently interpreted according to an ethic, specially religious, perspective or a secular, specially state, perspective. The Constitutional Court – it is his judgement – adopted precisely the separatism between ethics and law.