The Right to Personal Identity in Italian Private Law: Constitutional Interpretation and Judge-Made Rights

Abstract

According to a relatively wide-spread opinion in Italian legal culture, the right to personal identity is the right everybody has to appear and to be represented in social life (especially in portrayals performed by the mass media) in a way that fits with, or at least does not falsify or distort, one's personal history.

In the Italian debate, the right to personal identity is often considered as a “new” personal right. This means that: (A) it is a right that belongs to the person, in the sense that it is an entitlement or claim of human beings as constitutional subjects in contradistinction to, for instance, juristic persons (however, the question will be discussed in due course if and in what cases, a similar right can be recognised also to juristic persons); (B) it is a somewhat “new” right, in the sense that it has only recently been recognised by judges, legal theorists, and (finally) by the legislator, in a period that can be restricted to the last two decades.

Keywords: personal identity, judge-made law, privacy, media law