Culture and Constitution
摘要
This chapter examines what the Constitution reflects and establishes in cultural matters, which can be encompassed under the term cultural Constitution. In contrast to the category of the cultural State, the cultural Constitution emphasises individual and social initiative and freedoms, which the State must respect and promote. This chapter shows that culture permeates both the process of gestation of Constitutions and their extension and formulation, and then analyses in comparative perspective the sections of the Constitutions that have the strongest cultural imprint. We recognise and explain an evolution in constitutional production in recent decades, characterised by a greater sensitivity to the cultural fact and to cultural diversity. A rapprochement between human rights and international and national standards on the protection of cultural heritage is also discernible, which has been accompanied in several legal systems by a concern to protect the environment, nature, biodiversity and natural heritage, sometimes as inseparable components of the cultural identities to be protected.