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Starting from variability analyses in newborn screening systems at international, European and regional levels, this paper focuses on the Italian "model" highlighting some critical issues in a constitutional perspective. The law n. 167 of 2016 and the ministerial decree of 13 October 2016 allowed to achieve uniformity in the national diagnostic offer but their mutual inconsistencies contributed to a regional variability in the management of informed consent/dissent and in the management of the biological material collected. The protection of fundamental rights at stake still requires a constitutionally oriented harmonisation and development of the rules governing the newborn screening national system., BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 1S (2021): Special Issue 1/2021

BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 1S (2020): Special Issue: 1/2020

This paper starts from the assumption that biolaw is naturally a constitutional topic because it implies choices strongly intertwined with the set of fundamental values, protected against political majorities, that define the underlying ���core��� of our constitutional system. In this frame, the analysis of constitutional case-law about bio-juridical issues is organized around three main jurisprudential figures: those of ���cognitive relationality,��� ���interpretative relationality,��� and ���institutional relationality.��� The analysis of the selected case-law shows that the tension between constitutional principles and bio-juridical issues remains unavoidable and, indeed, the tension itself is the real engine of the development of biolaw in the system; therefore, rather than aiming to draw boundaries in the relations between law, science, constitutional principles and culture, the Constitutional Court seems to be looking for a point of dynamic equilibrium, one that could be defined as a ���relational equilibrium.��� In this perspective, the Court is not only facing the new constitutional challenges emerging from the interaction between life and technology but, in a broader view, it is seeking to outline a path for the future of democratic constitutionalism, showing how ethical pluralism and constitutional protection of rights can coexist., BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 2S (2019): Special Issue 2/2019

This article aims to identify three fundamental paradigms orienting the interpretative analysis in matters related to children's health. The normative analysis concerns both the international and the supranational regulations and focuses on the norms of law n. 219 allowing a reconstruction of the fundamental principles in the sector of the children's right to health. At national level, the analyzed areas are those of informed consent and shared planning of cares. These areas of protection constitute an instrument for verifying the reasonableness of the mentioned paradigms, such as the identity, the relational and the balance between protection and autonomy needs of children, which have emerged at international and supranational level and have been upheld by the principles of the national law n. 219/2017., BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 1 (2019)

Clinical ethics committees are bodies that provide bioethics advice to healthcare professionals working in hospitals and promote the culture of bioethics within a certain community. Italian legislation has not yet set out general rules for the nature and functions of these bodies whose role is becoming increasingly important due to biomedical technical progress, the raising of ever more complex problems in modern medicine from a clinical, ethical, legal standpoint, and the spread of moral and cognitive pluralism on bioethical issues. In the practical experience, where regional regulations are not available, normative frameworks of these committees have been established moulding case by case the applicable law. In this legislative vacuum, regulatory experimentation has been rich and manifold, but the absence of national rules has resulted in the disempowerment of the functions carried out by the clinical ethics committees. Indeed, the lack of national normative is likely to decrease, above all, those public and promotional committee functions aimed at enhancing and disseminating bioethical knowledge among the healthcare professionals and among the public in general by benefiting those communities living in the areas of hospitals within which the clinical ethics committees perform their duties., BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 3 (2017)