Reputazione, dignità, onore. Confini penalistici e prospettive politico-criminali.

The book analyses criminal law boundaries and criminal policy potentialities of such concepts as reputation, dignity, and honour. In the first part of the volume, honour and reputation are discussed, also with reference to the concept of human dignity, through an overview of the historical evolution of relevant criminal offences, of their theoretical as well as judicial interpretation, and of the social and cultural background that shapes their rich and complex meanings, and links honour, dignity and reputation to primary issues pertaining to the function and meaning of punishment. The study also covers other criminal offences which can shed further light on the nature and implications of the above mentioned concepts, such as honour killings and other honour crimes, duelling, and insult to public officials. This approach allows a better understanding of the contacts between honour/reputation, on the one hand, and personal identity, as well as privacy, on the other, particularly through the ‘liminal’ idea of a ‘right to be forgotten’ – a topic which is addressed more specifically with reference to the issue of divulging, or publishing anew, an individual’s criminal record. The second part of the book focuses on honour and reputation as currently protected under Italian criminal law, in comparison with the quite different approach taken by common law systems (particularly the English and American ones), which not only mainly or exclusively focus on private law remedies, but also define such interests in quite different ways. A comparison with, and a discussion of, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is also provided. The final chapter proposes a new definition of the boundaries between honour, reputation, personal identity, and privacy, on the one hand, and human dignity, on the other, suggesting a possible reform of the current criminal law of defamation, also with the purposes of improving the coherence of the criminal law system as a whole, and promoting a better and more effective use of the ‘reputational’ component of criminal sanctions.