OVERVIEW

The course will take place in the form of a rethinking of the considerations contained in the book "Legal Ethics - A Comparative Study" written by Geoffrey Hazard and Angelo Dondi, published in the year 2004 for the Stanford University Press. The book also had an Italian tradition, which appeared in 2006 under the title "Etiche della professione legale – Una prospettiva comparata".

On the line of that research - and attempting to update it - it is proposed to develop for the Italian jurist a notion of law of lawyering as a good practice of civil defense in court.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to carry out an analysis of the problem of the realization (or not) of good defence practices in civil disputes as an essential element of a non-neutral approach to the study of civil procedure. A crucial datum to this end seems to consist in the assumption -on the base of the lesson of Vittorio Denti, one of the most acute processualcivilisti of the last century- of the "perspective of the lawyer" as a basic reference for the assessment of the proper functioning of the procedural practice. Into such a perspective, moreover, not any technical defence is inevitably a good defence in court while, conversely, identifying the phenomena in which might take place practices not consistent with this parameter would be a fundamental commitment.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The aim is to tackle a number of problems, including: 

-  the centrality of the role of the lawyer in the civil justice system and its perception in society;

-  the practice of defense and its ethical-professional implications (in the interrelation with the client, with colleagues, with the judicial);

-  the privileged relationship with the judiciary in the perspective of the "own" and "not abusive" use of the procedural instrument;

-  ethical-professional values as prerequisites for the defence in court; 

-  the standard of reliability; 

- (cont’d) the standards of technical-professional competence of loyalty (as good behaviour towards colleagues) and fairness (as candor towards the judge); 

-  the ethical-professional disciplines and "new advocacy". 

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hazard, Dondi, Etiche della professione legale – Una prospettiva comparata, 2006, Il Mulino.

Any updated edition of the Italian ethical-professional discipline (Law n. 247/2012 and Codice deontologico forense). 

During the lessons will be periodically indicated other sources of which mostly reproducible copies will be provided. 

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD