Isotopía y distinciones entre lo viejo y lo nuevo: constitucionalismo democrático liberal y "constitucionalismo" autoritario

The essay, starting from the loss of scientific relevance of the category of constitutional transitions, focuses on the recently coined category of authoritarian constitutionalism. It is not an essay that aims to describe or classify authoritarian systems. The latter are reviewed only to demonstrate that the phase of constitutional transition for many of them is over, in the sense that they are avowedly and perhaps ineluctably authoritarian, to the extent that they use for their own purposes and needs certain staples of constitutionalism and certain categories of constitutional law (e.g. certain institutions of representative democracy). By virtue of this, the (North American) doctrine has coined the category of authoritarian constitutionalism. My proposal is that the word constitutionalism cannot be used alongside of the adjective authoritarian. To distinguish the word constitutionalism alongside that of authoritarian and the word constitutionalism alongside the word democratic, I evoke an isotopy, that is, the same word which has different meanings according to the different context and semantic features. The essential purpose of the essay is to scientifically describes that context in its historical/philosophical/juridical fixed points. In the end, I come to the conclusion that other regimes —in order to fall into the category of democratic constitutionalism —must embark on at least comparable paths and make use of fixed points that are comparable with it (think of the concept of ‘private law’ developed in the Middle Ages, the concept of private liberty as it evolved in the English system, the concept of secularism and pluralism that were not adopted instantaneously, but after long and gradual paths, also making use of authoritative philosophers and jurists such as Kant, Grotius and Santi Romano). Although I have my profound convictions, I do not take a position on the best way to regulate human coexistence, however, by identifying a scientifically supported method through which I suggest how certain terms should not be used promiscuously, I attempt to offer a contribution to characterizing and distinguishing constitutionalism. With the effect, obviously, of considering the category of constitutionalism as «prescriptive».