The course is meant to explain the historical process that led to the current legal system, showing the developments of law in Europe in its genesis and different national and ‘transnational’ aspects.
Course Content - Last names A-D
The course intends to give a general overview of the historical development of european civil and criminal law. The course is divided into two parts.
Course Content - Last names O-Z
The lessons investigate, with comparative-historical method, the foundation of Public Law from the medieval origins to the present.Special attention is dedicated to the relationships between power and law, to State formation and to the origins of legislative and administrative powers.
For attending students (attendance is required for corso di studi in giurisprudenza italiana e tedesca):
notes from the lectures
and P. Grossi, L'Europa del diritto, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2007, pp. 3-255
Supplemental readings will be indicated during the course.
For not attending students:
P. Grossi, L'Europa del diritto, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2007, pp. 3-255
e A. Cavanna, Storia del diritto moderno in Europa. Le fonti e il pensiero giuridico, Volume II, Milano, Giuffré, 2005, pp. 337-358; 395-589.
Regular students:
a) notes taken from the lessons
and
b) P. Cappellini, Storie di concetti giuridici, Torino, Giappichelli, 2010 pp. 1-48; 111- 161; 233-248;
and
c) P. Grossi, L’Europa del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, pp. 3-255.
Remote students:
P. Grossi, L’Europa del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, pp. 3-255.
and P. Cappellini, Storie di concetti giuridici, Torino, Giappichelli, 2010
pp. 1-48; 111- 161; 233-248
For the students attending the lessons:
P. Grossi, L'Europa del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, pp. 3-255, in addition to the lecture notes and the readings suggested by the teacher.
For non-attending students:
P. Grossi, L'Europa del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, pp. 3-255 e M. Fioravanti (a cura di), Lo Stato moderno in Europa: Istituzioni e diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2002, pp. 3-229.
oppure in alternativa P. Grossi, L'Europa del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, pp. 3-255; Aa. Vv., Il pensiero giuridico italiano: dal Medioevo all'età contemporanea, Roma, Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana, 2015, p. 155-269.
Learning Objectives
Knowledge
Knowledge of the relationship between the temporal and the contextual dimension of the legal phenomenon: historicity as the natural dimension of law. The milestones of medieval legal experience. Approach to the modern legal experience. In particular through an analysis of the main bodies of rules, concepts, legal principles of the modern age.
Abilities
A) Ability to contextualise the normative data used to solve complex legal problems.
B) Ability to grasp the historical dimension of legal language.
C) Capacity for interdisciplinary integration.
Expected results
Sensitivity to the profiles not only of norms but of judicial law-making, and therefore to the specific interpretive activity of jurists. Possibility of valuing the historical element as an integral part of the genesis of law and of its effectiveness-oriented interpretation. An awareness of the relativity of the basic legal concepts of modernity, starting with their historical evolution. Being careful not to reduce the legal dimension to a merely state-based or norm-based perspective, but to grasp it in the perspective of the (temporal and spatial) plurality of legal systems.
Learning Objectives - Last names A-D
Contents
The course intends to give a general overview of the historical development of european civil and criminal law. The course is divided into two parts.
Objectives
The course intends to illustrate and describe the historical development of legal culture and of european legal systems from the Middle Age to the XX century, providing a deep analysis of the main institutions and concepts.
Skills
Students are supposed to:
A) Contextualize the relevant legislation in order to solve specific legal matters;
B) Understand the legal language in an historical perspective;
C) Develop a multidisciplinary approach.
Abilities
The course intends to provide the fundaments of legal culture, emphasizing the role played by history both in law genesis and in (an effectiveness-oriented) legal interpretation.
Students, thanks to an historical approach, will gradually discover the relativity of modern legal concepts, as well as the complexity and vitality of legal systems both in a time and space perspective, thus avoiding the risk of considering them only from a legislative point of view.
Learning Objectives - Last names O-Z
Knowledge
Historicity as a natural aspect of law.
Main elements of medieval and modern juridical issues
Capabilities
Historicizing normative data.
Pointing out historical origins of juridical language.
Dealing with interdisciplinary character of juridical issues
Skills
Sensibility to interpretative nature of jurist's activity. Relativity of juridical concepts and consciuosness of their historical roots.
Prerequisites
None
Prerequisites - Last names A-D
Two different syllabus will be held in consideration of the frequency to the course: should the students decide to attend to the lessons, they would enroll in a separate list in view of the final test whose date will be communicated at the beginning of the course.
Prerequisites - Last names O-Z
Students who want to sit for the examination as 'regular students' must register in a list by a term that the teacher will indicate at the beginning of the course
Teaching Methods
Lectures: 72 hours.
Teaching Methods - Last names A-D
Compulsory lecture: 72 hours.
Teaching Methods - Last names O-Z
The course will take place in the form of lectures for a total of 72 hours, with a focus on the most relevant european historical sources. The related documents will be distributed during the lectures.
Further information - Last names A-D
Final Test
Students, between the third and fourth year, will be required to draft a study plan including facultative subjects and other activities as well as the subject of the final test.
Further information - Last names O-Z
For thesis and final exam you are invited to contact the teacher.
Type of Assessment
Final exam: oral.
Type of Assessment - Last names A-D
Type of assessment: oral examination. The oral examination will aim to verify, through a number of questions from general topics to more specific points: a) the knowledge of the concepts and ideas discussed during the course; b) the ability to process these concepts in an autonomous way; c) an awareness of historicity as necessary aspect of law and the knowledge of the historical and conceptual roots of legal institutions.
Type of Assessment - Last names O-Z
The examination will have place in oral form. A first question will be of general matter, regarding the medieval and modern legal experiences. The following questions will have a more specifical target, particularly about the works and historical sources and texts discussed during the lessons.
The evaluation will be measured on the student's ability to situate in a historical perspective the issue and his or her critical comprehension of the historical sources.
Course program
The course is meant to explain the historical process that led to the current legal system, showing the developments of law in Europe in its genesis and different national and ‘transnational’ aspects. To this end, after explaining the essential characters of the common law system, a mandatory starting point for every history of legal sources and culture in the modern age, the teaching will proceed through an examination of the relevant features of the French, Italian and German codification in the nineteenth and the twentieth century, to achieve an understanding of the fundamental aspects and the key problems of today’s legal reality.
Main topics to be treated:
Introduction:
1) Cesare Beccaria and his Dei delitti e delle pene, the Riforma criminale of Pietro Leopoldo di Toscana, art. 575 of the Italian criminal code: between ancient and modern, cues for a comparison.
2) Origins of the concepts of Constitution, Statute, Code: some proposals for a lexical and semantic reconstruction.
3) Code and Consolidation: the views of Viora, Astuti, Tarello. Origins of the modern (nineteenth century?) idea of Code: the loi 30 Ventoux année XII (21/3/1804), in particular art. 7, also in the light of travaux préparatoires. Some proposals on the current notion and function of the Code.
On the common law system:
1) Justinian’s compilation. From Capua to Marturi: the progressive re-emergence of Roman law in the eve of legal renaissance.
2) The ‘rediscovery’ of Justinian’s compilation in the Middle Age: Irnerius and the renovatio librum legalium.
3) The glossators’ school. Glossators and Justinian’s text. The Corpus iuris civilis and the Corpus iuris canonici. The aequitas canonica.
4) The commentators’ school. Communis opinio, counselling activity, the major courts.
Towards modernity:
1) Legal humanism. Andrea Alciato and mos gallicus. François Hotman. Alberigo Gentili and the reply of mos italicus.
2) Modern natural law. Grotius. Hobbes. Locke. Pufendorf. Leibniz. Domat and Pothier.
3) The age of consolidation. Colbert and Daguessau. The Leggi e costituzioni di sua maestà. A ‘snapshot’ of the so-called ‘legal particularism’: the case of Tuscany in Pompeo Neri’s Discorso primo. The project of ‘code’ by the Tuscan jurist. The thought of Ludovico Antonio Muratori. The Codice di leggi e costituzioni per gli stati estensi.
The age of codes:
1) Legal Enlightenment.
2) The dawn of modern codification: the French revolution and droit intermédiaire.
3) The travaux préparatoires of Code Napoléon and Portalis’s Discours préliminaire. The Code Napoléon: its structure; the preliminary title; ownership, contract, inheritance, family.
4) A different approach to codification: the Austrian universal code of 1811 (ABGB).
5) The codes of former Italian states and national codification.
6) The German civil code.
7) The legal twentieth century.
8) Genesis and structure of the 1942 Italian civil code.
Course program - Last names A-D
Introductory part
History as fundamental dimension of legal experience; the legal order in the age of globalization: a new european ius commune?; a pluralistic experience: the medieval legal tradition; features and crisis of the ius commune system in modern Europe (XVI-XVIII century): law as synonime of justice and order; the notion of interpretatio; the Second scholasticism movement and legal humanism; the protestant reform: individualism and modern state; from the notion of status to the notion of contract; law as synonime of statute law and expression of sovereign power; codifications in the ancién regime throughout the French revolution; the Enlightenment and the modern criminal law genesis: Cesare Beccaria and the “Leopoldina”; the relationship between law and revolution according to Santi Romano’s thought; the revolutionary legislation and the emergence of a proprietary anthropology; two different models of codification from the modern age: the Napoleonic Code and the Austrian ABGB and their application in Italy; the Exégèse as dominant legal doctrine and compulsory interpretation method in a state-centric perspective; reactions against codification in Europe: legal romanticism and Savigny’s school; the Italian codification: the 1865 civil law code and the 1889 criminal law code; commercial law and its authonomy from civil law; the turning-point in the late XIX century italian legal doctrine: the influence of german Pandectist movement; an abandoned path: the legal socialism; towards the XX century: a new codification or a new law?; the German BGB (1900) and the Swiss Code (1907): from the legal formalism to the legal realism; the decline of the XIX century liberal model: the first world war as a no turning back point in the history of european law;
Special part
The current year investigation will focus on the anti-individualistic legal movements, on law in totalitarian systems, on the relationship between the italian legal doctrine, the fascism and 1942 Civil Code genesis.
Course program - Last names O-Z
Foundation of Public Law from the medieval origins to the present.
Special issues
The concept of the State
State formation in continental Europe and particularly in France.
The Enlightenment
State, Law and Constitution
The French Revolution
Rule of Law and Rechtsstaat
The Emergence of Administrative Law
The Welfare State
The challenge of the present: Nation State, Sovereignty, Global Law