The book explores the evolution of the debate on the scope and meaning of the constitutional pacifist principles (or pacifist clauses) in Italy (article 11 of the Italian Constitution) and Japan (article 9 of the Japanese Constitution) generated by the war in Ukraine. The pacifist principle is a fundamental principle of both the Italian and Japanese Constitutions. Article 11 of the Constitution of Italy provides that Italy rejects war as an instrument of aggression against the freedom of other peoples and as a means for the settlement of international disputes. Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan provides that Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. The actual scope of these provisions has historically been the object of a heated legal and political debate in the Italian and Japanese societies alike. It is not controversial that the pacifist clauses allow (and even oblige) Italy and Japan to recourse to war as a means of self-defence of last resort, to ensure the survival of the democratic constitutional system when faced with an existential threat (a war of invasion/annexation). Scholars, however, disagree on whether (and to what extent) these provisions allow Italy and Japan to provide aid to a third Country engaged in a war of their own. The book explores this dilemma from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on legal, historical, philosophical, and comparative approaches.
1. Introduction.- ITALY.-
2. The Pacifist Principle and the Use of
Force in the Italian Constitution.-
3. From Vapid Pacifism to Aggressive
Pacifism. Themes, Languages, Organisational Forms of Pacifist Culture from
the Post-War Period to the End of the Short Century.-
4. The Pacifist
Principles of Conscientious Objection.-
5. Italian Scientists for Nuclear
Arms Control in the Cold War: A Concise Testimony.-
6. The Tension of the
Italian Constitutional Pacifist Principle in the Wake of the War in Ukraine.-
JAPAN.-
7. Six Faces of Article 9: Japans Constitutional Pacifism and the
World Order.-
8. E. H. Norman, C. L. Kades and the Feudal Remnants in
Postwar Japan.-
9. Whither Pacifism in Cold War Japan? An Interpretive Path
(1947-1990).-
10. Japanese Rearmament and the Constitution: A Misalignment.-
11. The Pacifist Integralism Myth: Japans Evolving National Security
Approach Since the 1992 Peacekeeping Law and the Japan Socialist Partys
Narrative and Political Shift.-
12. The Tragic Demise of Japans
Constitutional War Constraints.- THE COMPARATIVE AND TRANSNATIONAL
PERSPECTIVE.-
13. The Constitutions of Japan, Italy and Germany Reject War:
and the Current Non-Wars?.-
14. Umberto Campagnolo, the European Society of
Culture and the Atomic Threat: A Peace Proposal from Intellectuals during the
Cold War.-
15. War and Peace in Polands Constitutional Framework: Past and
Present.-
16. The Pacifist Principle in Germany: Between Established
Constitutional Constants and Unprecedented Military Expansionism.-
17.
Pacifist Clauses, Euro-Atlantic Integration Clauses and Neutrality in the
Constitutions of the Former Soviet Republics of Ukraine, Georgia and
Moldova.- THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE.-
18. Contingent or
Principled? On the Philosophical Distinctiveness of Pacifism.-
19. Political
Philosophy and the Problem of War: Mapping the Battlefield.-
20. Democracies
at Peace (or at War)? The Rise and Fall of the Democratic Peace Theory.
Giovanni Cavaggion is Associate Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the University of Milan, where he teaches Constitutional Law, Public Law and European Values and Cultural Rights. He authored the books Diritti culturali e modello costituzionale di integrazione(Turin, 2018), La formazione del Governo. Aspetti e problemi tra quadro costituzionale e nuove prassi (Turin, 2020), and I diritti della maggioranza nel costituzionalismo contemporaneo. Possibili derive illiberali della difesa dell'identità nazionale(Turin, 2025), as well as over 50 other articles and book chapters with national and international publishers. He is the coordinator of the Jean Monnet project European Values and Cultural Identities: Constitutional Challenges of the Promotion of the European Way of Life (EU-VALUE) and the principal investigator of the SEED project The pacifist principle in the Italian and Japanese Constitutions in the wake of the war in Ukraine (PEACE-ITA-JPN). His research interests include, among other things, the multicultural society, the protection of fundamental rights, multilevel constitutionalism, the European integration process, the fundamental values and principles of the European constitutional tradition.
