The History and Importance of Comparative Law in Italy

Abstract

This chapter’s author is one of the remaining Italians who has always insisted teaching comparative law. In Italy, the desired legal ‘globalisation’ is centred on comparative law. Indeed, there is a strong history of comparative law in Italy, and comparative law’s importance and relevant remains strong today. However, in Italy today, the need for a legal education rooted more deeply in comparative law is not particularly felt, for nowadays this need has been, to a large extent, fulfilled. The modern Italian legal practitioner has reproduced French law (nineteenth century), Austrian law (in the matter of civil procedures) and the German system (1900–1945), American and English solutions (in the matters of constitutional and criminal law procedure). So, Italian jurists properly understand their own law if they know the others’ law – the French, the German, and the American laws, and have always known and studied at least one foreign jurisdiction. Thus, they are aware that their own legal systems owes a lot to the dissemination of foreign legal models. The comparative lawyer is needed especially where the text of the law needs the creative input of an interpreter due to the importance of new ideas, new needs, and new aspirations. The IOLE is interesting because, essentially, one cannot conceive a legal knowledge that doesn’t extend to the full breadth of the legal solutions adopted (in the past or today), or possible. In terms of prioritising IOLE, what matters is that law be known in a global manner, with the use of comparison. The rest would then follow.