International Law in Italian

Abstract

Despite the greater fluidity of national identities, Italian scholarship of international law continues to be largely characterized by a number of common features. The permanence of a strong rule-based conception of international law is probably the most striking one. A rule-oriented approach dominates the international legal discourse in Italian scholarship: its focus is on the determination, interpretation, and application of international rules. Moreover, despite the growing trend toward specialization, to a large extent Italian scholarship continues to embrace a generalist approach to the study of international law. The persistence of these and other common features may be explained by a number of factors. A long, deeply rooted, and culturally rich tradition of studies in international law is one of the principal explanations. The use of the Italian language is another element. In a scholarly world dominated by English, the permanence of a scientific debate in Italian is a factor that contributes to preserving a certain national identity in Italian scholarship. Italian scholars have not been resistant to the growing use of English as the main working language worldwide. The use of English may also be explained by the fact that Italian scholars increasingly tend to publish their works abroad. Yet despite the increasing use of English particularly by the younger generation of scholars, the great majority of articles in Italian international law journals are still written in Italian. Italian scholars continue to publish their monographic works predominantly in Italian. The dimension of this community, with more than 250 scholars employed in Italian universities, and the presence of lively scientific institutions contribute to the permanence of an effective internal debate. The selection of books, articles, entries in encyclopedias, and other publications presented in the next section is based, first of all, on a linguistic criterion: they are all written in Italian. Another criterion is a chronological one. The selection mainly includes recently published studies, in particular monographic works. The aim is to provide an overview of the main studies on international law issues in the current legal literature in Italian. Alongside more recent studies, a restricted number of older works, written by well-known maestri of the discipline and representing uncontested points of reference in the field, have also been included. This entry is the result of a joint work between the two authors. However, P. Palchetti is the author of the sections Introduction, Journals, History and Perspective, Sources, The Relationship between International and Domestic Law, International Criminal Law, Immunities, Territory and Sea; M. Arcari has written the sections Textbooks, Subjects And Actors, Responsibility, Use of Force and Collective Security, Human Rights, Environment and international Economic Law.