The missing subject:

a question about the subjective presupposition of global constitutionalism

Abstract

Luigi Ferrajoli's proposal for an Earth Constitution has advanced considerably within the contemporary legal response to civilizational emergencies. His diagnosis of systemic crimes and his architecture of binding supranational guarantees constitute a productive theoretical framework that recent legal scholarship has examined with attention. Two contemporary documented episodes, the Boeing 737 MAX case and the Colombian Supreme Court's judgment STC4360-2018, show, nevertheless, that the material effectiveness of the legal instruments designed to address this crisis depends, to a considerable extent, on the concrete dispositions of the individual actors called upon to apply them. That observation raises the question of the morally imputable subject, understood as the concrete human being upon whom responsibility for decisions affecting future generations falls, by virtue of the power and knowledge exercised. Hans Jonas's ethical foundation, articulated with the intergenerational trust figure developed in contemporary Ibero-American legal doctrine, offers elements for conceiving obligations towards the future as legally enforceable categories. The classical philosophical tradition, from the Aristotelian prudentia, is extended in contemporary descriptions of the technocratic paradigm as a deseducation of practical virtue, which allows for an anthropological characterization of this subject. The call for a Global Educational Pact appears as a formative response that places the reform of educational systems as a material condition of possibility for global constitutionalism to achieve concrete effectiveness.