INTRODUCTION

’ Your body is a battleground 'says an inspiring poster of the artist Barbara Kruger published in 1989. Privacy, self-determination, personal autonomy and the general right to liberty have traditionally served as reliable barriers against excessive state health paternalism. This does not seem to be the case any longer. The COVID-19 pandemic has been used by governments all over the world as an excuse to impose massive and largely disproportionate restrictions on freedom. Thus, COVID-19 has triggered the birth of an omnipotent and largely uncontrollable’ health Leviathan ‘creating visible threats to human rights, liberty and the pillars of the liberal constitutional order promoted during the second’ Belle Époque’ that stretched through the post-Cold War period. This health Leviathan is especially dangerous when combined with the incredible technological advancement which has not been paralleled by corresponding demo-technocratic public culture and reliable constitutional and legal frameworks capable of coping with the achievements of the information technology (IT) revolution. The emergent health Leviathan has been defined in even harsher terms by Hans Michael Heinig and by Jürgensen and Orlowski as a fascist-hysterical hygiene state.

COVID-19 has produced tremendous pressure on constitutionalism. It is not only the virus itself that has so profoundly shaken the wellordered constitutional orders of the states, so carefully arranged according to the political imperatives of post-Cold War period and the socio-legal imperatives of neo-liberal globalisation. What was so frightening is that a pandemic of moderate intensity – produced by a dangerous flu, but still not by Ebola or plague – was able to trigger radical and devastating effects on constitutional order. Governments were introducing states of siege and states of emergency, enabling them to suspend fundamental rights and infringe cornerstone principles of constitutionalism which had remained unchallenged and sacred for decades. Discriminatory nationalism, populism and authoritarianism blossomed. The risk of this new type of ‘health authoritarianism’ became visible. Disproportionate limitations of liberty were mushrooming.