Global Pandemic and the Role of Courts: Opening Survey

While policy makers, legislators and scientists have been in the front line in designing the institutional and regulatory framework of the preparedness strategy, the role of courts has soon emerged as a key component of the institutional response to the challenges brought by the current pandemic. Not only courts have overseen statutory legislation and administrative acts, in order to assess their conformity with constitutional norms and the rule of law; but, on a more substantive level, courts have also been custodians of fundamental rights, ensuring the right balance between conflicting ones. This article is aimed to introduce a section of the new Global Pandemic Network Journal devoted to litigation with a view to address a possible need for inter-institutional cooperation and to establish an ideal dialogue among courts and policy makers of different world regions, facing comparable issues in the context of the current pandemic. Moving from a comparative analysis of some of the decisions taken by courts in the first year of the pandemic, a research agenda is proposed, mainly looking at the impact of the health and economic crises upon the effective protection of fundamental rights and freedoms and their reciprocal balancing. Future contributions will feed this debate, providing comparative analyses across different world regions and showing to what extent some of the changes brought by the pandemic will remain as drivers for new balancing.