Ateneo - UPO

The aim of the course is to answer these two fundamental questions: “What is the law?”, “Which is the nature of legal knowledge?”.

For attending students:
M. Vogliotti, Tra fatto e diritto. Oltre la modernità giuridica, Giappichelli, 2007 (except for Chapter IV). Also reading these books is highly recommended: M. Barberis, Giuristi e filosofi. Una storia della filosofia del diritto, Il Mulino, 2011 (the following chapters: I, III, IV, VI, only § 6.3) and P. Grossi, Prima lezione di diritto, Laterza, 2003. A reader will be provided during class.
For not attending:
M. Barberis, Giuristi e filosofi. Una storia della filosofia del diritto, Il Mulino, 2011 (the following chapters: I, III, IV, VI, only § 6.3), P. Grossi, Prima lezione di diritto, Laterza, 2003, M. Vogliotti, Tra fatto e diritto. Oltre la modernità giuridica, Giappichelli, 2007 (except for Chapter IV), M. Vogliotti, La fine del grande stile e la ricerca di una nuova identità per la scienza giuridica, in V. Barsotti (eds), L’identità delle scienze giuridiche in ordinamenti multilivello, Quaderni del Dottorato fiorentino in scienze giuridiche, Santarcangelo di Romagna, Maggioli, 2014, 95-171 and G. Zagrebelsky, La virtù del dubbio, Laterza, 2007.

The course aims to introduce first year students to the complexity of the law, not as a mere system of norms, but as an historically determined interpretative social practice.

No

Lecture style and socratic method

Students with physical disabilities, Learning Disabilities or Special Education Needs can request specific services and tools via the Staff Sviluppo e Coordinamento Carriere e Servizi alle Studentesse e agli Studenti, consulting the University webpage: https://www.uniupo.it/en/services/servicesstudents-physical-or-learning-disabilities Students with disabilities, learning disabilities or special education needs, once they have contacted the University Staff, can refer to the tutor in charge of the course to define the examination modalities, concerning academic aspects.

Oral exam

The aim of the course is to answer these two fundamental questions: “What is the law?”, “Which is the nature of legal knowledge?”. The law will be presented not as a “thing”, a “substance” (law as a system of norms), but like an interpretative practice, a relation between law ex parte potestatis (the positive law) and law ex parte societatis (the fundamental values of society, its ethos). This second dimension of law (traditionally represented by the category of natural law) was lost by the modern positivism and will be recovered after the Second World War and the totalitarian regimes with the Constitutions and the judicial review. This transformation of the ontology of law was the consequence of the modern epistemology break (the modern legal thinking rejected the ancient, Aristotelian, method of practical reason for the method of theoretical reason, considered stronger and more certain). The thesis is that this epistemology break is the origin of a paradoxical process of weakening of the law that will result in the nihilistic diagnosis

Thinking like a lawyer and understanding complexity of the law, as an historically determined interpretative social practice.