HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN LAW D - L

Knowledge and understanding

Students have to prove to be able to orient themselves in the secular European legal experience, and to understand continuity and turning points that mark the “times” of Western history. From Middle Age to the rediscovery of Justinian’s texts, from the Absolutist State to the age of codification, to get to the major themes of the "crisis of law" in the age of globalization.

Applying knowledge and understanding

The course aims to stimulate students’ critical reflection on the intersections of legal dimension with other institutional frameworks (economy, politics, religion, mentality, routines, etc.) that contribute to structure social life within the same context. Students will be challenged to develop the understanding of historical and legal sources, and to cultivate the comparison between legal systems of Civil Law and Common Law tradition.

Lectures, slides, workshops, judgements' analisys, mooting.

The course aims to illustrate, in its essentials features, the history of the sources of law and of the European legal science from the decline of the Western Roman Empire up to nowadays. Usefulness and limits of traditional periodization: the High Middle Age and the Late Middle Age; the Modern Age; the Contemporary Age. The purpose of the course is to provide an overview of the social, legal, political and religious changes happened in Europe up to the 20^th century in order to highlight the links between legal science, law and jurisprudence. The main topics to be covered during the course are: the laws of the barbarians; the birth and the development of medieval universities; the legal science of Glossators and Commentators; the origins of Modern State; the Legal Humanism; the doctrine of natural law; the Enlightenment; the French Revolution; the age of codifications.

AA.VV. Tempi del diritto, Giappichelli, Torino, 2018.