HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN LAW
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2020/2021
- Teacher
- FRANCESCO D'URSO
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- IUS/19
Training objectives
- The course aims to illustrate the history and the development of the poltical institutions and legal culture, from the Middle Ages until the time of codification, in the wider context of European civilization.
The main knowledge acquired concerns the history of the sources of law and their mutual relations, the main doctrinal elaboration and the complex transformations of the modern state.
Students learn to recognize the process that led to the current configuration of law (civil law, common law, public law), in order to be able to better contextualize and understand it. Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of Roman Law institutions and of european medieval and modern history.There are no preliminary exams. Knowledge of latin is not required.
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 Commentators. Interpretation. Medieval legal pluralism. The theory of shared property.
Part II: Law in modern times.
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. 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 in which the historical legal problems will be explained referring to the concrete legislative, doctrinal and judicial sources. Half of the course is devoted to the medieval part (20 hours); the other half to the modern age. It's recommended that students take accurate notes of what is explained in class.
Learning assessment procedures
- Oral exam. Students will be asked to answer some questions - usually three- about the course topics and to analyze the legal sources of the past. The final assessment is established in relation to the results of each question.
Attending students must demonstrate that they have constantly and carefully attended the lessons.
Non-attending students must demonstrate that they have studied the books in depth. Reference texts
- Attending students:
1. lecture notes.
Non-attending students:
1. P. Grossi, L’ordine giuridico medievale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1995, pp. 253.
2. P. Grossi, L’Europa del diritto, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2007, pp. 65-255.
