HISTORY OF MODERN CONSTITUTIONS AND CODIFICATIONS
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- MICHELE PIFFERI
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- IUS/19
Training objectives
- The main knowledge provided by the course are: (1) the origins of modern European constitutionalism (2) the history of civil law codification and constitutional history, with (3) a specific focus on the role played by general principles. The abilities gained by students are: (1) a critical approach to legal sources, developing further what they learned in the course of Medieval and modern legal history; (2)interpretation and comprehension of different historical patterns of European constitutionalism and their influence on current constitutional debate.
Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of private law, constitutional law and medieval and modern legal history.
Course programme
- The main subjects of the course are: the notion of codification. The constitutions, the limit of the sovereign power and individual rights. The Enlightenment and legal reforms. The French Revolution: natural law, tensions between law and rights, tensions between freedom and equality. The French Revolution, its different Constitutions and the attempts to enact a civil code. The Napoleonic Code. The Restoration after Napoleon’s Empire and the difficult path towards codified constitutions. The importance of civil law codification. The penal codification and its constitutional value. The Italian case and the pre-unitary civil codes. Liberal ideas and constitutions: the Italian “Statuto Albertino”. Civil code and national identity: the civil code as constitution in Italy during liberalism. The crisis of the code system. Social laws: rule of law and the rise of welfare state. Corporativism. The Weimar Constitution and its influence on European legal culture. Codifications, constitutions and totalitarianism. The Italian Constitution.
Didactic methods
- Lectures with reference to legal texts and theoretical interpretations, focusing on the importance of legal history as a critical tool for the comprehension of current legal issues. Legal sources will be available on-line on the course's webpage. The first 10 hours will be focused on the medieval and modern roots of constitutional thought about sovereignity and power. 20 hours will be dedicated to the XIX and XX centuries. 10 hours to authoritarian regimes, totalitarism, and constitutionalism after the WWII. Colleagues from other Italian or foreign unversities will be invited to give lectures on the history of the Weimar Constitution on the occasion of the centenary from its enactment.
Learning assessment procedures
- Oral exam, aiming to ascertain the comprehension and knowledge of the subjects analysed during the course, as well as the abilities gained by students in critically interpreting both legal sources and different European constitutional frameworks.
It consists of six questions and the final mark is the average of all of the answers. Reference texts
- For the attending students, the exam should be prepared exclusively by studying what is discussed (and the material provided) during classes.
For those students who do not attend the classes:
Maurizio FIORAVANTI, Appunti di storia delle costituzioni moderne: le libertà fondamentali, Torino, Giappichelli (qualsiasi edizione).
Giovanni CAZZETTA, Codice civile e identità giuridica nazionale. Percorsi e appunti per una storia delle codificazioni moderne, Torino, Giappichelli, 2018, capitoli I, VII, VIII.
