The Influence of Foreign Legal Models on the Development of Italian Civil Liability Rules from the 1865 Civil Code to the Present Day (original) (raw)
Related papers
This book is the first in a series of volumes describing the Italian legal system. The plan of the work involves separate volumes dedicated to the " Italian style " and to sources of the law, the analysis and description of the fundamental elements of the system, and the critical exposure of specific institutes of private law. The choice to use English language with a simple and plain presentation of subjects, is justified by the desire to disseminate this work to Italian and especially foreign students of the new university courses in cooperation and development, international relations, economic and political sciences as well as law courses. With this first opening volume (which holds the updated results of earlier researches) the Author describes the historical-cultural background of the Italian legal system and the contemporary legal thought.
For a more in-depth analysis of some ideas mentioned herein, see-in addition to the studies contained in this volume-the preface to my work entitled Studi di diritto comparato e in tema di interpretazione, Milano, 1952, and my paper Interpretazione del diritto e diritto comparato, republished in Saggi di diritto commerciale, Milano, 1955; and for examples as regards the difference between regulae juris and concepts pertaining to a typological reconstruction of reality (a distinction which ENGISCH now has also referred to), in addition to the above, see also my papers Considerazioni in tema di personalità giuridica and Sul concetto di titolo di credito, republished in the aforementioned Saggi di diritto commerciale. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Filippo Vassalli and will be included in the studies in memory of the late Professor. (Ascarelli's original note) ** Translation by Camilla Crea, Associate Professor of Private Law, University of Sannio, School of Law. Thanks to Keith Baverstock and to an anonimous referee for their precious advice in some translating choices. This translation refers to the text of the essay 'Antigone and Portia' republished in T. Ascarelli, Problemi giuridici, I (Milano: Giuffrè, 1959), 3-15 (henceforward DOC B) for it is the most quoted. Significant discrepancies with the first version (published in Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del Diritto, 1955, 756-766: henceforward DOC A), as well as with the latest version of the same essay included in Studi giuridici in memoria di Filippo Vassalli (Torino: Utet, 1960), 107-117 (henceforward DOC C) are documented in the translator's footnotes.
2015
On February 1433 at the university of Pavia the humanist Lorenzo Valla attacked the eminent jurist Bartolo da Sassoferrato, arguing that contemporary legal thinking was intellectual garbage. Jurists, all bartolians, forced him to leave the university. Symbol of a division that has never really been resolved, this story provides two dialectical images for an exercise in counter-narcissism for legal scholars. Valla and Bartolo show us the salvific upheaval of legal thought: to be ashamed of the established power. In the transnational context, the Italian difference is the political primacy of conflict: without a centre, the world still maintains many outskirts. Refreshing its reflection in the corners of the world, legal science frees itself from the mortal danger of paranoid relationships with reality. Criticism is the method to build transnational legal scholar networks: only the weapons of criticism can release self-subversive energy in law.
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2024
Making use as a guideline of a self-authored manuscript-dated February 2000where the "Maestro" reveals himself, this essay explores the academic life and the scholarly achievements of Rodolfo Sacco, the Italian master of comparative law, who just recently passed away. His intellectual endeavor is described throughout the lenses of a common thread that underlies his entire scholarly output: it his ability to illuminate the dark places of law, finding it where no one had sought it before. This is the essence of his original contribution to the understanding of the legal landscape's dynamics and it is the core of his cultural legacy, not only to comparative lawyers, but also to the community of the jurists at large.
Guido Calabresi on Torts: Italian Courts and the Cheapest Cost Avoider
2009
Guido Calabresi proposed to replace the dominating paradigm of fault with simpler strict liability rules that put liability on the most appropriate actors (the cheapest cost avoiders). Assuming that the objective function of the tort system is the mimimization of the sum of the injury and injury avoidance costs associated with accidents (primary costs), risk-spreading costs (secondary costs), and administrative costs (tertiary costs), he suggested that the adoption of strict liability, targeted to specified activities, would achieve the goal of cost minimization. The core of an extremely richer message was that the cheapest cost avoider test would abate the administrative costs of courts. Moreover, the manufacturers' ability to spread the costs of strict liability through the prices charged for their products would effectively insure product users against the risks of injury. This masterpiece of normative analysis has deployed an ever increasing influence on thinking about tort law, not only in the US but also in Europe. This paper aims to trace the impact of Calabresi's ideas on Italian case-law.