HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN LAW
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- FRANCESCO D'URSO
- Credits
- 9
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- IUS/19
Training objectives
- Knowledge of the main methodological problems of historiography and legal historiography; good basic knowledge of the modern and contemporary legal experience through the analysis of fundamental topics, e.g. the development of modern State, the relations between State and law, and between legal science and political power, and the system of the sources before and after the codification process. The course provides the following abilities: (1) the ability to interpret and contextualize legal sources (texts, decisions, rules, laws) by understanding their political and institutional reasons; (2) the ability to historicize legal norms as well as theories or cases by using legal history as a critical tool.
Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of Roman Law institutions about Private or Public Law.
Course programme
- Part I: Law in the Middle Ages.
The absence of State. Legal customs. Notion of regulatory case. The legal protection of the relation between individual and goods. The plurality of property rights over goods. The feudal society. The origin of legal science and the glosses. Glossators and reviewers of Roman Law. Interpretation. Medieval legal pluralism. The theory of shared property.
Part II: Law in modern times.
The most common opinion. The pragmatic nature of ius commune. Tribunals and the regulatory centralization. The attempts of doctrinal rationalization of legal provisions. Customs and Court style. The two sovereigns of the Early Modern Age: the prince and the judge. The natural law doctrine.
State centralization of law: consolidation. The ordinances. Characteristics of modern codes. The Prussian General Property Law (“Allgemeines Landrecht”). The French debate. Genesis of the Code Civil. The school of exegesis. The Code Civil as a model of codification and its success. The codes of the Italian States. The Austrian General Civil Code (“Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch”).
The Italian Civil Code in 1865. The German historical school: Savigny. The debate on codification. The school of the Pandects. The origin of the German Civil Code. The Italian Civil Code in 1942. Didactic methods
- Lectures
Learning assessment procedures
- Oral exam
Reference texts
- For attending students:
- Lecture notes and
G. CAZZETTA, Codice civile e identità giuridica nazionale. Percorsi e appunti per una storia delle codificazioni moderne, Torino, Giappichelli, 2018, chapters I-V-VII (pp. 1-70, 141-167, 187-209)
For non-attending students:
- P. GROSSI, L'ordine giuridico medievale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2006;
- P. GROSSI, L'Europa del diritto, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2007;
- G. CAZZETTA, Codice civile e identità giuridica nazionale, Torino, Giappichelli, 2018, chapters I, II, III, IV, V, VI (pp. 1-185)
