TThe main knowledge provided by the course are: (1) the origins of legal modernity (2) the history of civil law codification and constitutional history, with (3) a specific focus on constitutional theories of XX Century
For students regularly attending classes:
- class notes and materials indicated by the professor during the course.
For non-attending students: Giovanni CAZZETTA, Codice civile e identità giuridica nazionale. Percorsi e appunti per una storia delle codificazioni moderne, Torino, Giappichelli, 2018, Cap. I-VI, pp. 1-185.
- Maurizio FIORAVANTI, Lezioni di storia costituzionale, Torino, Giappichelli, 2021 (Parte prima: Le libertà fondamentali, pp. 1- 173)
Learning Objectives
Knowledge of the main characteristics of modern law and of the juridical culture of the 19th and 20th century. Focus on the most important arguments of the period between these two centuries and on the main doctrinal assumptions.
Skills: capability to put in the right historical dimension the laws and regulations of contemporary age by virtue of their recent past; capability to perceive the principal aspects of a certain juridical culture, following an interdisciplinary approach which stretches over the different dimensions of law.
Competencies: ability to catch and recognize the deep marks that history leaves on regulations and on the culture where it belongs.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of private law, constitutional law and medieval and modern legal history.
Teaching Methods
The course will take place in the form of lectures and seminar activities for a total of 48 hours, with a focus on the most relevant european historical sources. With reference to legal texts and theoretical interpretations, the lectures will aim to highlight the importance of legal history as a critical tool for understanding current legal issues.
Type of Assessment
The oral examination (3-4 questions, approximately) will have the puropose to verify: a) Knowledge of the concepts and ideas discussed during the course; b) Ability to process these concepts in an autonomous way; c) Awareness of historicity as necessary aspect of law and knowledge of historical and conceptual roots of legal institutions. To pass the exam all the answers need to be sufficient and they don’t have to show lack of preparation or serious mistakes. The evaluation be higher the more the student will show: ability to connect the topics, ability to re-elaborate the notions in an autonomous way and ability to historical contextualise institutions and theories. The evaluation will also take into account: ability to think critically, quality of the exposure, an appropriate use of technical lexicon.
Course program
The main subjects of the course are: the notion of codification as main character of legal modernity and the path to modernity. The French Revolution: natural law, tensions between law and rights and between freedom and equality. The Napoleonic Code. The Austrian codification. The battle for codification in Germany. Civil code and national identity: the civil code as constitution in Italy during liberalism. The crisis of the code system as a crisis of XIX century’s juridical culture. Social laws: rule of law and the rise of welfare state. Italian constitutional doctrine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: V.E. Orlando and Santi Romano. European constitutional theories in the early twentieth century: Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt and the Weimarian doctrine. The Fascist constitutional order and its legal culture. The “doctrinal caesura” of the late Thirties and its repercussions on the republican constitution