La dottrina internazionalistica italiana e la tutela internazionale dei diritti dell’uomo (1945-2005)

This paper is aimed at providing an overview of the general trends of the Italian international law scholarship concerning the international protection of human rights during the period from 1945 to 2005. The idea is advanced that human rights have been considered (with one exception) only in the framework of some general issues of international law between 1945 and 1960 (para. 2), whereas human rights issues have been managed increasingly as autonomous legal issues, starting from 1960 (para. 3). Between 1970 and 1987, Italian scholars have mainly focused on judicial or quasi-judicial aspects of the international protection of human rights; at the same time, a widespread attitude to submit human rights-oriented thesis has arisen (para. 4). Moreover, some different methodological approaches have progressively been elaborated (ibid.). These tendencies increased during the period between 1987 and 2005, due to the establishment of some human rights-journals, as well as to the large attention paid by scholars to criminal international law issues and to the impact of human rights on some traditional legal issues (para. 5). Some critical remarks are made in paragraph 6, aimed at stressing the different features of the above mentioned approaches. Furthermore it is shown that, regardless of these differences, a certain methodological eclecticism has come to prevail. It is also maintained that the Italian international law scholarship cannot be considered as "human rightist" ("Droits-de-l’-hommiste"), in spite of the said attitude to advance human rights-oriented thesis.