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.
Autonomy and independence of judgement
During the lessons, the teacher will ask students to speak on specific points to verify, refine and increase critical and judgmental skills. For example, during the lessons, with regard to a historical period, or to a legal institution from the past, or to an important point of the legal experience covered by the course, students will be asked to create links with the present or with other contexts to explane the differences.
Communication skills
Organized in small groups, students will present posters, wordclouds or powerpoints on topics covered in class.
Learning ability
To proceed independently in the study, the student will be provided with information on the use of the main research tools: databases; libraries; magazines; collections of sentences; archives.

Lectures, slides, workshops, judgements' analisys, mooting. Taking into account the situation linked to the COVID-19 emergency, the necessary changes with respect to what was previously stated may be introduced, in order to respect the program envisaged and reported in the Syllabus, with the provision of lessons to be held in mixed or remote mode.

The course is designed to provide the indispensable historical-juridical knowledge to future jurists and to refine their logical-argumentative abilities. During the course of the lessons the fundamental passages of the European juridical history from the Middle Ages to the modern age will be analyzed: the role and the function that the law has carried out on the formation of the main political organizations of the time; the high-medieval legal systems and the role of custom; the rediscovery of Roman law; the origins of legal science; the study of law in medieval universities; the function of the Church and the importance of medieval canon law; training and development of the main legal institutions; the history of justice and civil and criminal trials; the function of jurists in the creation of law and the main schools of legal thought from the Middle Ages to the modern age; the theoretical premises of codification.

M. Bellomo, Società e istituzioni dal medioevo agli inizi dell'età moderna, Euno edizioni 2019, p. 450.

Alternatively, students can agree with the teacher the choice of a different text.