SEMINAR: Future Generations as a Legal Category: From the Non-Identity Dilemma to the Legal Definition

Please join us for a presentation by visiting researcher Antonio Foti, PhD candidate at the University of Milan. Antonio will deliver a paper based on the research he has been carrying out at Aberdeen (hosted by the Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law), followed by a Q&A session. 

‘Future Generations as a Legal Category: From the Non-Identity Dilemma to the Legal Definition’

The contemporary era has radically transformed the relationship between time, law, and collective responsibility: for the first time in history, the present generation can irreversibly compromise the living conditions of those who will come after us. This brings about a “reversal of Kantian thought”: future generations are no longer destined to inherit an improved legacy, but risk finding themselves at a disadvantage as a result of our current choices. The law, however, is designed to operate in the present and on specific individuals. Future generations do not yet exist, are not identifiable, and do not participate in decision-making processes. This gives rise to the central tension of the paper: how can the law attribute significance to future entities without violating its own theoretical premises? To address this challenge, this work first analyzes Parfit’s Non-Identity dilemma, which shows how future persons depend entirely on present choices, making it difficult to speak of harm or liability. Subsequently, the main moral theories – utilitarianism, egalitarianism, sufficientism, libertarianism, communitarism, contractualism, and institutionalism – are examined, all of which attempt to establish intergenerational justice despite this dilemma. This theoretical path leads to the analyze’s central objective: to construct a legal definition of “future generations”. Not as subjects of law in an antropological and ontological sense, but as a functional legal category – abstract and non-individualized – that allows the legal system to represent future interests and to orient public action toward the long term. In this way, the law can integrate the future into its own rationality without resorting to subjective fictions, but through a conceptual framework consistent with its own fundamental categories.