Autodeterminazione e diritto privato

This writing refers to self-determination as a fashionable category now circulating about the decision regarding life and death in case of diseases in terminal stage. The main question is who has the responsibility, when a person is no more able to do it by him- or her- self, to decide between life and death. On this point the author argues that no one has a power like this but a judge weighing previous attitudes and values of the person as well as the present situation in which he or she could keep living or die. At the same time, also from a constitutional point of view, which indicates the moral values enshrined in each legal order, the author refuses the idea that self-determination can be the only perspective from which all the question can be oriented.