OVERVIEW

The lectures aim to offer a suitable knowledge of the main elements of public law in a comparative perspective, and they pay specific attention to: 1) political regimes and their historical evolution; 2) organization of local autonomies and emergence of multi-level governance; 3) systems of government (especially in the liberal-democratic regimes); 4) constitutional guarantees.

The course contributes towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals nn. 4, 5 and 16 of the UN 2030 Agenda.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the course the student will acquire:

- an appropriate knowledge of the forms of state in their historical evolution, with particular regard to the democratic and Socialist State,

- an adequate knowledge of the systems of government in the Democratic State (in particular the parliamentary, presidential, semi-presidential and directorial systems),

- the methodology and appropriated competences to deal critically and comparatively with the issues of Constitutional Law,

- the proper vocabulary for illustrating and discussing researches in the field of Comparative Constitutional Law

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the course the student will acquire:

-        identify the different forms of state and systems of government and illustrate how they work;

-        analyze and explain the modalities of the relations between the central state and the local authorities in the various models of federal and regionalized state;

-        deepen the rules and principles about rights and duties present in the constitutional texts and their pratical consequences;

-        understand the mechanisms of guarantee of the Constitution and their working, especially the role played by the bodies in charge of the constitutional review;

-        correctly apply comparative methodologies in the critical examination of the main issues of constitutional law;

-        read and critically examine, with autonomy of judgment, scientific articles of comparative constitutional law, Constitutions, sentences of the Constitutional Courts.

-        expose and argue using the legal-constitutional language correctly researches in the field of comparative constitutional law.

PREREQUISITES

Even in the absence of an official prerequisite, it is advisable to have already taken or to prepare at the same time at least the exam of "Public Law".

During the course, the teacher will however explain again, in a synthetic way, the public law concepts that will be developed in a comparative key.

TEACHING METHODS

The course is 54 hours long and gives 9 CFU. 

Lectures will be taught by blended teaching (i.e. teaching in presence with contemporary broadcasting of the lecture through TEAMS platform). In every case, AulaWeb platform is going to be used to support educational purposes.

Lectures in presence are going to be taught in the "Albergo dei Poveri" educational centre; the scheduled time of the lectures will be published as soos as possible. Lectures in streaming are going to be taught through TEAMS platform, on the team "Prof Aristide Canepa 2025/26" (password wsupybg ), channel Diritto Costituzionale Comparato ed Europeo. The teacher is going to upload the recordings to TEAMS platform and the teaching materials to AulaWeb platform, on the channel devoted to the course, in order to guarantee the availability of the course also to students who, for any reason, weren't able to take part in class lectures nor to log on the lectures in streaming.

Non-attending students (neither in class nor in streaming) will have to integrate their preparation with additional readings and texts, according to the item "Recommended Reading/Bibliography".

Teaching will be based mainly on lectures, possibly complemented by slides and/or other teaching media, but it can also involve seminars and students' guided research activities, with public exposition of the outcomes.

The professor could also look after providing or recommending (either during the lectures or through Aulaweb) readings and studies (in foreign languages, too), useful to the preparation of the following lectures.

External lectures, speeches and congresses related to the discipline could be considered as part of the course. In this case, the professor will inform the students about them, during the lectures and through AulaWeb.

For such reasons, students are heartily recommended to register themselves in the course page on AulaWeb platform. Such a page is going to be the official channel of communication between teacher and students, and all the informations on the course (including possible changes in the way the course will be taught) will be uploaded there.

The teacher is also the Department contact person for students with handicaps and/or learning disorders. Students in a certificated condition of handicap or learning disorder are warmly encouraged to contact him, at the beginning of the course, in order to agree teaching and exam methods that, still respecting the course aims, take into account the individual learning needs and offer adequate compensatory instruments.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The introductory part of the teachings will be devoted to the following macro-items:

a) The forms of state and the different ways of structuring the relationship between public powers and people.

b) The types of state and the different ways of structuring the territorial distribution of the public powers.

c) The different concepts of Constitution and the ideology of constitutionalism. Outlines of comparative methodology.

In the following part, the analysis of some of the main contemporary democratic experiences will be developed, aiming to highlight:

a) The history of the evolution of both, constitutionalism as a whole and the different national constitutional traditions. 

b) The constitutional discipline of rights and duties and the system of sources of law in the countries studied.

c) The systems of government in the liberal-democratic regimes. Their general principles and the different ways of structuring the relationship between the top constitutional authorities.

d) The different models of constitutional justice.

e) The main electoral systems and their impact on the dynamics of the systems of government, in particular on the relations between the executive and the legislative powers.

Some items of the debate on institutional reforms in Italy, as well as of the integration between European governance and national political processes, could also be treated during the lectures. 

Due to the prospective extent of the topics to be debated in the course, and the objective impossibility of debating all them in only 54 hours of lectures, the teacher reserves the right to focus the lectures only on a part of the content, possibly leaving the in-depth analysis of the remaining part to the study of the text books. 

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Please note: The teacher didn't authorise the commercial distribution of any "notes of his lectures". So please don't purchase anything similar.

Recommended texts:

A) The main text book is:

• G. Morbidelli-M. Volpi-G. Cerrina Feroni, Diritto costituzionale comparato, Torino, Giappichelli, 2nd ed., 2024

B) As a documentary support to the lectures, the students may rely on texts and documents collected in the following volume:

• L. Cuocolo, Costituzioni, Milano, Egea, 2021

C) The students who won't pledge the minimum required attendance to the lectures shall add one of the following volumes:

• G. Amato-F. Clementi, Forme di Stato e forme di governo, Bologna, il Mulino, 2012; or
• V.R. Scotti, La Turchia di Erdoğan, Bologna, il Mulino, 2022; or
• F. Palermo-J. Woelk, Germania, Bologna, il Mulino, 2022; or
• A. Torre, Regno Unito, Bologna, il Mulino, 2021; or
• L. Stroppiana, Stati Uniti, Bologna, il Mulino, 2021; or
• A. Rinella-E. Consiglio, Cina, Bologna, il Mulino, 2023.

The volume sub A) is recommended as reference text, but the students are also allowed to use other university texts of Comparative Constitutional Law, provided that such texts encompass the whole specified programme and have been published in the last 10 years.

During the lessons, other readings could be pointed out for foreign students and/or for people interested in deepening the items in question.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Teaching activities will occur during the second term and lectures are scheduled three times a week.

Starting day and scheduled time of the lectures will be specified as soon as possible in the present record, and both in the AulaWeb page and the Teams channel of the course.

In any case, students are recommended to refer to their web agenda, at the following link: https://easyacademy.unige.it/portalestudenti//index.php?_lang=it , as well as to specific AulaWeb page and Teams channel, in order to be informed of any possible change.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The exam is oral and in Italian.
At least three topics related to the course will be discussed, starting from the general concepts and progressively entering into detail.
For particular situations, at the motivated request of the student, the exam may be written.
In the case of a written exam, this will consist of three open questions, on topics at different levels of depth.
The Examination Commission is designated by the Department Council and, unless impeded, it is chaired by the lecturer in charge of the course.
Under justified request, foreign students may be allowed to take the exam in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

First of all, the student should demonstrate: the knowledge of the course topics, an accurate use of the language, a suitable order in the presentation of the subjects, competence in the technical language, juridical, politicological and historical.

A preferential evaluation will be conferred to the following skills: the ability to re-elaborate in a critical way the acquired information and the concerned topics; the accurate implementation of the comparative methodology; the ability to analyse critically juridical texts, documents and customs, as well as every other historical and factual element significant in the real working of a constitutional system; the possible expression of personal considerations, duly reasoned and justified, according to the acquired data and comparative methodology.

FURTHER INFORMATION

There is no more information to give.

Therefore, the teacher has filled the present entry only to avoid remarks by the Athenaeum Unit for Quality Assurance. 

The time needed to fill (and translate in English) the present entry (whom no student will ever read), as well as many other useless documents, was snatched to research activities - theoretically, the main activity of university faculties - since it was unsafe to snatch it to the inalienable hours of sleeping.