OVERVIEW

The Philosophy of Law (law & economics and legal informatics) course aims to introduce students to the contemporary debate regarding the way in which law affects the practical reasoning of its recipients and the resolution of conflicts. In covering the wide range of topics that are the subject of this debate, the teaching puts students in contact with the most well-known ethical, legal and economic theories, reflecting on the practical impact of their theses on the decisions of legal operators and of the recipients of the norms in general.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The central aim of the course is for students to develop their analytical and critical skills towards legal institutions. To this end, they will have to achieve mastery of the fundamental concepts with which to carry out the analysis of the proposed themes and learn to use the methods developed by different theoretical currents, with special attention to the contributions of the philosophy of language, political-moral philosophy, and law and economics.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Individual study and active attendance at teaching will allow students to:

 present the different theories on normative language and the way in which they conceive normative (i.e. practical) conflicts;

evaluate in a comparative way the different conceptions of law, morality and the relationship between law and morality;

recognize the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic problems that legal language presents;

distinguish different types of norms and the way in which each of them justifies behavior;

compare the different conceptions of reasoning based on following rules, their relevance, and the criticisms that have been directed at them;

articulate different types of arguments in support of a normative conclusion;

reconstruct the motivation of a judicial sentence and carry out a critical analysis;

identify fallacious arguments and, in general, weaken and strengthen arguments;

apply fundamental legal concepts;

recognize the main theoretical notions of the economic analysis of law and understand their practical applications;

critically discuss the application of the economic analysis of law to the resolution of practical conflicts;

be aware of the different potential of the application of legal informatics:

describe the implications of the use of legal informatcis for judicial activity and for the current institutional design of legal systems;

As regards transversal skills, this teaching mainly aims to promote the development of functional literacy, personal competence and social competence, all at an advanced level, as well as to develop the ability to learn to learn at a basic level.

PREREQUISITES

No prerequisites are required to take the course.

TEACHING METHODS

The course will basically take place through frontal lessons, for a total of 72 hours (equal to 12 CFU) and divided into three modules. During the lessons, the main theoretical notions of the proposed program will be presented and analyzed and the selected practical cases will be discussed. .

 Active participation in the lessons will be taken into consideration at the time of the final evaluation.

Occasionally, scholars and experts in legal theory may be invited to give a lesson on topics of particular interest related to the program.

During the semester, techniques such as instant polling, case- and problem-based learning, group teaching and the flipped classroom method will also be adopted. These approaches will allow us to focus on the development of transversal skills, such as alphabetic-functional competence (advanced level), personal competence (advanced level), social competence (advanced level) and the ability to learn to learn (basic level).

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course is divided into three modules:

 1- In the first module, the teaching aims to introduce students to the knowledge of the main philosophical proposals about:

the general notions of norm, practical reasoning and practical conflict;

how ethical and legal theories impact the resolution of practical conflicts;

a concrete practical conflict on a topic that will be chosen.

2- In the second module, the aim of the teaching is to provide the student with the main tools that the logic and philosophy of language provide to understand and identify:

the different strategies for distinguishing normative language from non-normative language;

the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic problems that afflict legal language;

the logical characteristics of different types of norms and reasoning applying norms;

the different types of practical arguments used to resolve the problems faced when applying the law: gaps, antinomies, interpretative problems;

the internal and external justification of the judicial decision;

argumentative fallacies and ways of strengthening and weakening arguments.

3- In the third module, the main tools of two currents of law and econimcs will be introduced (the classical theory and the "nudge" theory), after which the current state of legal informatics will be presented, as well as its potential for application in practice and its critical aspects. The teaching will focus on the following topics:

the main theoretical notions of the two currents proposed on the economic analysis of law;

the application of these notions to the analysis of concrete cases;

the critical discussion of the strategy of the economic analysis of legal conflicts.

the possibility and implications of the application of legal informatics in the drafting and analysis of legal texts, in the resolution of judicial cases and in the current institutional design of legal systems.

Topics covered in the first module:

Different conceptions of norms. Norms as reasons for action. Practical reasoning and practical conflicts. Moral conflicts. Conflicts between legal rules. Conflicts between law and morality.  Conflict resolution criteria. Conceptions of law. Conceptions of morality. Relationship between conceptions of law and conceptions of morality. Analysis of the moral and legal arguments relating to a concrete case that will be chosen.

Topics covered in the second module:

The legal system. Different types of legal norms. The difference between rules and principles. Validity, applicability, effectiveness. The dogma of completeness. Gaps and defeasibility. Legal language. The great divide between normative and descriptive language. The indeterminacy of language. Ambiguity and vagueness. Types of definitions. The internal and external justification of the judicial decision. Problems of external justification. The interpretation of the law. Theories of interpretation and argumentation. The validity and goodness of an argument. Different types of arguments. Different types of fallacies.

Topics covered in the third module:

Law and Economics and its main currents. The classical theory. Costs, benefits and externalities. Various efficiency concepts. Pareto efficiency and Nash equilibrium. Applications and criticisms. The “nudge” theory. The “goad” and the architecture of choices. The effect of structuring alternative options. The effect of describing alternative options. Applications and criticisms. The current state of legal IT. Three examples of practical application: drafting and analysis of legal texts; analysis of court cases; resolution of court cases. Critical aspects of legal informatics.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Texts for student who attended the course (attendance: a minimum of 2/3 of the classes):

1. Il materiale (PowerPoint) introdotto su AulaWeb.
2. Damiano Canale, Conflitti pratici. Quando il diritto diventa immorale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2017. Tutti i capitoli a eccezione del VI, pp. 1-161 e 196-228 (193 pagine).
3. Carlos S. Nino, Introduzione all’analisi del diritto, Giappichelli editore, Torino, 1996, cap. II [pp. 55-87], III [pp. 116-125], IV [pp. 147-209] e V [pp. 217-258] (144 pagine).
4. Andrea Iacona, L'argomentazione, Einaudi editori, Torino, 2005, cap. IV (41 pagine).
5. Giovanni Tuzet, Analisi economica del diritto come argomentazione giuridica, in "Teoria jurídica contemporânea" Vol. 3, No. 2 (giugno-dicembre 2018), pp. 97-122 (26 pagine).
6. David D. Friedman, L'ordine del diritto. Perché l'analisi economica può servire al diritto, Il Mulino, 2004, capp. 1 e 2 (28 pagine).
7. Marco Li Calzi, Un eponimo ricorrente: Nash e la teoria dei giochi in "Bollettino dell’Unione Matematica Italiana, Serie 8", Vol. 6-A—La Matematica nella Società e nella Cultura (2003), fasc. n.1, pp. 3–26 (24 pagine).
8. Luciano Matteo Quattrocchi, La teoria dei giochi, in "Diritto ed economia dell'impresa", fasc. 1/2018, pp. 127-137 (11 pagine).
9. Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein, Nudge. La spinta gentile, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2009, pp. 7-47, 181-188, 206-218 (59 pagine).

This program can be used also by working students, after consulting with teachers.

Texts for students who did not attend the course:

1. Damiano Canale, Conflitti pratici. Quando il diritto diventa immorale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2017 (228 pagine).
2. Carlos S. Nino, Introduzione all’analisi del diritto, Giappichelli, Torino, 1996, cap. II, III, IV, V e VII (269 pagine).
3. Andrea Iacona, L'argomentazione, Einaudi editori, Torino, 2005, cap. IV (41 pagine).
4. Giovanni Tuzet, Analisi economica del diritto come argomentazione giuridica, in "Teoria jurídica contemporânea" Vol. 3, No. 2 (giugno-dicembre 2018), pp. 97-122 (26 pagine).
5. David D. Friedman, L'ordine del diritto. Perché l'analisi economica può servire al diritto, Il Mulino, 2004, capp. 1 e 2 (28 pagine).
6. Marco Li Calzi, Un eponimo ricorrente: Nash e la teoria dei gioci in "Bollettino dell’Unione Matematica Italiana, Serie 8", Vol. 6-A—La Matematica nella Società e nella Cultura (2003), fasc. n.1, pp. 3–26 (24 pagine).
7. Luciano Matteo Quattrocchi, La teoria dei giochi, in "Diritto ed economia dell'impresa", fasc. 1/2018, pp. 127-137 (11 pagine).
8. Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein, Nudge. La spinta gentile, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2009, pp. 7-47, 181-188, 206-218 (59 pagine). 

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

ANDREJ KRISTAN (President)

LUCA MALAGOLI (President Substitute)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

The course will take place in the second semester, in the period between February 10 and May 15.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

For students who attended the course, the final exam is oral and consists of two parts.  First of all, the student will have to present, in depth, a topic of his choice, among those explained during the lessons and contained in the books indicated in bibliography.  At a later stage, the student will have to answer the questions formulated by the commission on the theoretical and practical points of the program.  The final grade of an attending student takes into account his or her active participation during the lessons.

For non-attending students, the final exam is oral and consists of two parts. The exam will begin with the detailed presentation of a theme of the program, chosen by the student. At a later stage, he will have to answer the commission's questions about the teaching program. 

Students in possession of a disability or DSA certification can request to make use of compensatory measures (e.g. additional time, concept maps and schemes, modifications in the written/oral modality) during the exams, following the procedure indicated in the guidelines (p. 5) published here.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

It will be assessed that the student has acquired sufficient concepts and analytical-argumentative skills with respect to the problems studied. In particular, the student must show that they are able to argue adequately, clearly express the concepts studied and make them operational through examples. In general, students will have to show that they have achieved the expected results, indicated in this program.

In the case of attending students, the commitment shown in each of the phases of teh courses will be taken into account, both in the lessons and in the final exam.

Students in possession of a disability or DSA certification can request to make use of compensatory measures (e.g. additional time, concept maps and schemes, modifications in the written/oral modality) during the exams, following the procedure indicated in the guidelines (p. 5) published here: qui

Exam schedule