Learning objectives
The course offers an overview of developments and transformations of law over the centuries of the Middle Ages, with the aim to highlight the essentially historical character of the legal phenomenon and to emphasize the importance of an appropriate historical perspective of existing law.
More specifically, the course aims to develop the legal sensitivity and to widen the cultural horizons of the students, drawing attention to the need to problematize the uncritical assumptions of dogmatic disciplines.
The aim of the course is therefore to develop in the students of law a critical awareness, in order to warn them against the risk of considering necessary, immutable and final the existing legal solutions, instead of seeing their inevitably contextual, dynamic and particular character.
On the other hand, the course aims to show the meaningful persistence of consolidated and shared intellectual models with which lawyers - both past and present - build up, interpret and modify the legal experience of their time.
Prerequisites
- - -
Course unit content
The subject of this course concerns the examination of the various legal experiences (pertaining to the field of both private and public law) from the end of the Ancient World to the Modern Age, with specific reference to the sources (legislative, doctrinal, documentary, judicial), as well as to institutions and jurists. Special attention will be given to the creation of the University in the Middle Ages, as a model for the organization of scientific teaching in the following centuries. Appropriate emphasis will be given, therefore, to studying the evolution of literary forms and methods of teaching in the schools of Glossators and Commentators, as well as the development of the main hermeneutical approaches in the legal field. Classical canon law, including the legislative activity of the popes and the procedural techniques used in the medieval ecclesiastical courts, will be illustrated as well.
Full programme
- - -
Bibliography
In order to prepare for the exam it is recommended to use the following textbooks:
A. Padoa Schioppa: Il diritto nella storia d'Europa. Parte 1: Il Medioevo, CEDAM, Padova 2005;
A. Errera: Lineamenti di epistemologia giuridica medievale. Storia di una rivoluzione scientifica, Giappichelli Editore, Torino 2006;
A. Errera: Forme letterarie e metodologie didattiche nella scuola bolognese dei glossatori civilisti: tra evoluzione ed innovazione, in Studi di storia del diritto medioevale e moderno, vol. I, Monduzzi Editore, Bologna 1999, pp. 33-106;
A. Errera: Tra analogia legis e analogia iuris: Bologna contro Orléans, in Studi di storia del diritto medioevale e moderno, vol. II, Monduzzi Editore, Bologna 2007, pp. 139-189.
Teaching methods
The course will take the form of traditional lessons; seminars may also be organised during the course.
The professor will use the classroom projector for displaying images and educational diagrams.
Assessment methods and criteria
The course of History of Italian Law is organized in two years. At the end of the first year, i.e. at the end of the course here described, the student can register via internet for the exam, which will consist of oral questions on the topics dealt with by the professor in classes, divided into a series of questions about different points of the program. Upon completion of the test, the examiner will inform the student of the grade obtained, expressed in a vote out of thirty.
If the student accepts this mark, a form will be filled in, containing the student's identification data and the details of his exam. If the candidate wants to retake the exam in order to achieve a better mark, no form will be filled in, and the student may retake the test in the immediately following exam session.
In any case, even the positive outcome of the test does not lead to the drafting of an official record of the exam, since this will be issued only after passing History of Italian Law II, that is to say the second part of the exam, which is taught during the second year. The grade obtained in the test of History of Italian Law I, registered in the provisional form above said, will be taken into account in determining the final mark that has to be recorded in the official report, mark which will be calculated making the average between the grades of both exams of History of Italian Law, I and II.
Other information
- - -
