Authority versus Liberty in Europe: Evolution of a Paradigm

The conflict between authority and liberty has long been considered as a way of interpreting public law. Such a paradigm seemed to have lost its relevance after the advent of contemporary constitutional democracies and the consequent acknowledgment of the individual (or the person) as the base of public power. However, the working paper aims to show how the current crisis of the rule of law, with regard to both European and global trends, has restored the importance of the authority-liberty opposition.