PRIN2015 - Subject of law and vulnerability: institutional models and legal concepts in transformation

The research deals with the notion of vulnerability, investigating its theoretical status and the role it acquires in the reconfiguration of the subject of law, placed in relation to contemporary institutional structures that constitute the essential context of reference, and in which it takes substance. The category of vulnerability, as an ineluctable part of the human existential condition, can show its practical relevance in terms of the protection of human rights. This, however, requires a work of conceptual clarification and precision. Vulnerability, in fact, is still a highly indeterminate notion. It has connections with insecurity, produced in various ways (some even violent) by the power exercised over others. It also refers to otherness, recognition, interdependence, trust and solidarity.