Vaccinazione anti COVID-19 e consenso del minore ultrasedicenne

Abstract

The essay focuses the issue of minor's informed consent in connection with COVID-19 vaccination in English and Italian legal systems The starting point in the English legal system is the Gillick competence criterion, in accordance with a well-known House of Lords precedent of 1985 on minor’s informed consent, in order to verify the ability of the minor regarding the choice to undergo COVID-19 vaccination. At the same time on the level of Italian law, given the lack of a general criterion such as Gillick competence, some judicial interventions, albeit in a fragmentary way, have already opened to the recognition of a sort of pre-capacity to act to over 16 minors in some areas, even in the absence of a clear and unambiguous discipline, the adoption of which today would become 2 more necessary than ever - given the emergency situation - with reference to anti Covid-19 vaccination. In this context the comparative perspective appears useful as it allows to identify, in both the considered legal systems, the different bases of informed consent and, at the same time, to study its effects and practical consequences in the protection of a subject, the minor, who has undeniably become an active subject like the associates adults. This analysis will not necessarily lead to the discovery of ontological and cultural divergences between the two systems but it will highlight positive discoveries also in terms of that process of rapprochement and convergence between two worlds once considered distant but increasingly united and contiguous in the modern and comparative definition of western legal tradition.