The paper discusses the impact of globalization and transnationalization processes on the concept of responsibility, as elaborated by modern legal tradition, in turn linking it to those of politicization and constitutionalization. It starts from the insight that a legal system can be considered as constitutionalized only if extra institutional collective actors and functionally differentiated social processes establish in their internal operations forms of “ecological” responsibility, thus building their own internal politicization(s). In this regard, it is recalled that only in this way XX century’s constitutions gained actual effectiveness in extra institutional social spheres. For the same reasons, by letting collective actors avoid responsibility, globalization and transnazionalization weakened their internal politicization, with an overall de-constitutionalizing effect. In order to rebuild an internal politicization of collective actors, legal theory must reframe the concept of responsibility taking into account the social realities of post modernity This post modern framework should shape legal responsibility with a view at strengthening both the openness and the obligation to the internal politicization by social actors. In such a scenario the law of responsibility should aim at sanctioning un limited socialprocesses and actors, as well as potentiating the social impulses coming from civil society. The paper finally discusses two case studies, namely Kasky v. Nike and Bruker v. Markovitz, in order to highlight the applications and outcomes of the pro posed theoretical framework.
