THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND FERRAJOLI’S CONSTITUTION OF THE EARTH

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN JURIDICAL UTOPIA AND THE VANGUARD OF INTERNATIONAL JURISPRUDENCE

Abstract

This article examines the advisory opinions issued in 2025 by the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which establish binding legal obligations for States in addressing the global climate crisis. These opinions are critically compared with Luigi Ferrajoli’s proposal for a Constitution for the Earth, a normative framework aimed at reinforcing planetary environmental governance through global constitutionalism. The central hypothesis posits that the advisory opinions represent a significant normative milestone in international environmental law and engage in meaningful dialogue with Ferrajoli’s theoretical model. Through a comparative critical analysis, the study explores the intersections and divergences between the legal foundations of international jurisprudence and the utopian vision of global constitutional law as conceived by Ferrajoli. The findings confirm the initial hypothesis, revealing that despite its practical limitations, Ferrajoli’s proposal offers a valuable theoretical horizon for advancing global environmental governance. The scope focuses on reading the opinions as fragmentary manifestations of global guarantee functions, without seeking to demonstrate the full feasibility of a world constitution. The study is documentary, bibliographic, qualitative, comparative, and guided by the hypothetical-deductive method.