Demographic ageing and the protection of the older persons in contemporary legal systems

The essay aims to analyze, from a comparative law perspective, the impact of population ageing on traditional legal categories, highlighting the inadequacy of welfare systems and legal protection to meet the specific needs of the older persons, who seem relegated in a “grey area of the law”. The elderly represent a considerable and rapidly growing segment of the world’s population: this is not only a demographic data, but is even a “silent revolution” in society, with profound repercussions in the public and private spheres. Therefore, the research is aimed at investigating whether and to what extent the national traditional legal systems are capable of taking account of the problems connected with the ageing of the population and, in this way, of providing legal protection for the elderly operating in the legal environment. Underlying the issue of the protection of the older persons lies a fundamental dualism: on the one hand it seems essential to create specific protective instruments for the third age; on the other hand, the creation of a category to which a set of differentiated protections must be attached risks becoming blatantly discriminatory for those who, despite their age, retain their physical and intellectual faculties unaltered. Therefore, the essay analyzes some of the main areas in which the lack of specific recognition of the “weakness of the old age” emerges, such as the protective measure and the formation of contract, giving account of the general problems and the specific solutions adopted in different legal systems