156
Marta Cartabia
Troisième séance de travail — Les perspectives
The ‘federalizing effect’ of Van Gend and the greater ‘integration through law’
it brought about were instruments of the Community of peoples which was
the main interest of the judgment. An enhanced protection of the individual
was the key idea of Van Gend, which brought about ‘un droit des ressortis-
sants à une protection juridique qui depasse les limites traditionnelles de leur
système national’, as Trabucchi stated in his famous note on the
Van Gend
case (
2
). His cultural background and the recent history of his country made
him very sensitive to the needs of the person, with institutions and other le-
gal mechanisms being, in his conception, at their service (
3
). He belongs to a
generation of legal scholars that was well aware of the limits of legal positiv-
ism, that caused the shameful ‘legal injustice’ (
4
) that took place in Europe in
between the two world wars. Therefore their ‘legal creativity’, as scholars and
judges, was prompted by the urge of securing a better protection of the human
person: ‘Il sistema giuridico moderno sta accogliendo l’ispirazione del mondo
nella tendenza a volere più giustizia che legalità. Il giudice, strumento umano
del diritto, non è più soltanto chiamato ad applicare delle norme astratte ai
casi concreti o a temperare la rigidità di qualche dogma: al giudice si chiede
una valutazione degli uomini e dei rapporti secondo esigenze di pratica giusti-
zia che sono indicate, ma non tutte attuate nella legislazione’ (
5
).
2. The same solicitude for the individual inspired, over time, the develop-
ment of a rich system of protection of fundamental rights in the European
Union: first, with the ‘heroic’ 1970s case-law of the European Court of Justice;
then with the amendments to the Treaties, from Maastricht onwards; later,
with the approval of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and, more recently,
with the new text of Article 6 of the Lisbon Treaty, which confers binding legal
force on the Charter and envisages the accession of the Union to the ECHR.
(
2
) The note is now published in,
La formazione del diritto europeo – Quaderni della Rivista
di diritto civile, n. 14,
Padova, Cedam, 2008, pp. 171-177. On the contribution of Judge
Trabucchi to the Vang Gend decision see P. Gori, in this volume and P. Gori, Quindici
anni insieme ad Alberto Trabucchi alla Corte di giustizia CE, in
La formazione del diritto
europeo,
quoted, pp. 71-83; G. Perini,
Alberto Trabucchi giurista europeo. Alle radici del
diritto in Europa: una testimonianza inedita,
in
La formazione del diritto europeo,
quoted,
pp. 145-187.
(
3
) This point is highlighted by P. Mengozzi,
Rapporto tra Stato e individui nella giurisprudenza
comunitaria,
in
La formazione del diritto europeo
, quoted, pp. 111-115.
(
4
) G. Radbruch,
Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Recht
(1946), italian translation:
Ingiustizia legale e diritto sovralegale,
in A. G. Conte ed.,
Filosofia del diritto,
Milano,
Cortina, 2002, p. 152 ss.
(
5
) A. Trabucchi,
Il nuovo diritto onorario
, in
Rivista di diritto civile
, 1959, I, p. 495 ss.
