The Italian Legal System: An Introduction - Hardcover

Livingston, Michael A.; Montaneri, Pier Giuseppe; Parisi, Francesco

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804774951 ISBN 13: 9780804774956

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

For fifty years, the first edition of The Italian Legal System has been the gold standard among English-language works on the Italian legal system. The book's original authors, Mauro Cappelletti, John Henry Merryman, and Joseph M. Perillo, provided not only an overview of Italian law, but a definition of the field, together with an important contribution to the general literature on comparative law. The book explains the unique "Italian style" in doctrine, law, and interpretation and includes an extremely well-written introduction to Italian legal history, government, the legal profession, and civil procedure and evidence.

In this fully-updated and revised second edition, authors Michael A. Livingston, Pier Giuseppe Monateri, and Francesco Parisi describe the substantial changes in Italian law and society in the intervening five decades—including the creation and impact of the European Union, as well as important advances in comparative law methodology. The second edition poses timely, relevant questions of whether and to what extent the unique Italian style of law has survived the pressures of European unification, American influence, and the globalization of law and society in the intervening period. The Italian Legal System, Second Edition is an important and stimulating resource for those with specific interest in Italy and those with a more general interest in comparative law and the globalization process.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael A. Livingston is Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School. Pier Giuseppe Monateri is Professor of Law at the University of Turin. Francesco Parisi is Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota.

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The Italian Legal System

An Introduction

By Michael A. Livingston, Pier Giuseppe Monateri, Francesco Parisi

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-7495-6

Contents

Preface to the Second Edition, 
Preface to the First Edition, 
1. History of Italian Law, 
2. Italian Government, 
3. The Law Professionals, 
4. Civil Procedure and Evidence, 
5. The Italian Style: Doctrine, 
6. The Italian Style: Law, 
7. The Italian Style: Interpretation, 
Appendix: A Note on Italian Source Materials, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

History of Italian Law

1.01Introduction. Even a summary exposition of the history of Italian law must begin with its matrix: Roman law. Roman law had a thousand-year history, from the primitive XII Tables in the fifth century B.C. to the Codification of Justinian in the sixth century A.D. In the course of this millennium, radical changes occurred in legal institutions.

Justinian's Codification, as it was interpreted and developed by Italian jurists from the twelfth century onward, is the direct source of the Italian legal system. However, it is necessary to turn to the law of the late Roman Empire in order to understand the materials with which the juridical schools of the twelfth and succeeding centuries began the remarkable process of developing a legal system that marked the renaissance of juridical civilization in continental Europe.

1.02The Principal Periods of Italian History. The history of Italian law can best be understood in relation to the cultural, political, social, and economic histories of Italy. This is, of course, a very large subject which can only be touched upon here. The interested reader will find it valuable to supplement this chapter with other readings on Italian history.

Italy's period of greatness began early in the eleventh century, rising on foundations created by the blending of two cultures: Roman and Germanic. This period was marked by the birth of Italian law and the Italian language and the rebirth (Renaissance) of the arts, commerce, and the liberties of the townspeople. For four centuries, Italy was the principal center of European civilization. In a great burst of creativity, Italians of genius transformed the worlds of art, thought, and action.

The creative ferment in Italy in the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries had been preceded by centuries of barbarian invasions and was followed by centuries of economic, political, and moral decadence. The liberties enjoyed by the Italian cities degenerated into the pomp, plots, and despotism of the new nobility. New invasions by the French, Spanish (the most devastating, both materially and morally), and Austrians began at the end of the fifteenth century; foreign domination lasted until liberation and unification in the nineteenth. The scars of this period remain, especially in the South, where the wounds inflicted by foreign rule were deeper. Indeed, the fascist dictatorship, with its nationalistic rhetoric, its resentment of the outside world, and its isolationism, may have been a kind of ultimate consequence of this period.

Despite the relative decline in creativity, "none of the successive epochs of Italian history has failed to leave its mark. ... As opposed to a country like Greece, which lived for centuries in the backwaters of history, in Italy the record is continuous, the stream of civilized activity has never been interrupted." Even in the darkest centuries, creative figures appeared. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced the painter Caravaggio and the sculptor Bernini, whose baroque architecture changed the face of Rome. Galileo (1564–1642) "built the foundations of modern science and led the struggle against the Aristotelians and their narrowmindedness." The eighteenth century had its geniuses: the historian-philosopher Giambattista Vico and the legal scholars Beccaria and Filangieri. The eighteenth century also had the art of Tiepolo, the comedy of characters and costumes of Goldoni, and above all the sublime music of Antonio Vivaldi, the "red priest" who inspired Johann Sebastian Bach. In the following centuries came the poetic grandeur of Leopardi, Foscolo, Manzoni, and Carducci; the strong realistic novels of Verga; the ante litteram "existential" works of Pirandello; and the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini.

The history of Italian law during these great periods is intricately involved with, and consequently tends to reflect, the cultural, social, political, and economic histories of Italy. It begins with the great creative achievement of the Glossators and the University of Bologna in the twelfth century, dominates the legal life of Europe for several hundred years, and then subsides in the sixteenth century. In the years that follow there are substantial, sometimes brilliant, legal achievements, but they stand out as unusual. In the early 1500s, the center of legal creativity shifted, first to France and Holland and then to Germany, and Italy received the ideology of the French Revolution and the French codes, and later in the nineteenth century German legal scholarship.

With the fall of fascism and the end of World War II, Italy entered a new period. The new Constitution of 1948 came into force, and Italy experienced an economic miracle of industrial and commercial development, as well as drastic changes in the patterns of rural and urban life throughout the peninsula. Many aspects of Italian law were successfully reformed, and the project of European integration brought further changes to the Italian legal system.

1.03The Pre-Justinian Compilations and Justinian's Corpus Juris. The sources of the Roman law at the end of the third century A.D. may be divided into two categories: leges and iura. In the late Empire, the term leges included all general enactments of the emperors, particularly in public law. The entire complex of opinions of those juris-consults endowed with ius respondendi ex auctoritate principis was known as iura, and may be crudely analogized to case law in the common law systems. By the middle of the third century A.D., this kind of authoritative source lost the creativity it had enjoyed in the preceding centuries, and the decay of juridical culture had become, in the West, an irreversible phenomenon. During this same period, it became apparent that the bulk of imperial legislation, which was both massive and disorganized, needed systematic reorganization. This necessity gave birth to two private collections: the Codex Gregorianus, compiled about 292 A.D.; and the Codex Hermogenianus, the continuation of its predecessor, of which we possess but a small part of the text. As private collections, they had no official authority.

Of much greater importance was the Codex Theodosianus, compiled, like the others, in the East. This was the product of a commission of jurists named by the Emperor Theodosius II. The Code was divided into sixteen books and contained only the enactments (constitutiones) dating from Constantine's reign, with certain nonradical modifications made by the compilers. It was extended to the West on January 1, 439, by solemn vote of the Roman Senate. During the early Middle Ages, it was widely known and used in the West, especially in the transalpine regions, which, unlike Italy, did not receive the compilation of Justinian.

In 527,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804774951
• ISBN 13: 9780804774956
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 270
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland