The Italian Legal Recipe: Basic Ingredients and the Bustle of Time

Abstract

Many legal systems beyond the classical common/civil law mixed world may show themselves as the result of a historical combination of different paradigms, and of ever changing legal blends. Allegedly 'pure' (i.e. unmixed) civil law systems are no exception, as the Italian legal experience demonstrates. The Italian legal system stands as an emblematic illustration of how, in a civil law context, original and foreign (both civil law and common law) inspired legal rules, institutions, and attitudes may interact, develop through time, and synthesize themselves in a complex, yet unified legal culture.

As is well-known, from a comparative perspective Italy is commonly conceived as a member of the civil law legal family, and, more in particular, as a mix of XIX-XXth century French and German influences. This is, however, only one side of the picture. Whatever their current respective zones of influences are, the point is that French and German legal models are no more (as they have never been) the only ingredient of the Italian recipe. As a matter of fact, the origin of many components stretches wider both in time and space. In some cases, it stretches back to the fragmented plurality of normative levels which characterized the peninsula’ legal edifice for centuries before political unification. In other cases, the origin of legal rules stretches up to the more recent borrowings from the United States experience: from the plea bargain to the ‘quasi’ adversary criminal trial, from securitization techniques to financial contracts models, from class action devices to the overarching patterns of judicial review.

Hence, far from being a purely civil law amalgam, the Italian legal framework presents itself as the fruit of an endless interaction of local patterns with foreign-inspired paradigms. This is why the 'mixed jurisdictions' lenses can prove extremely useful in looking at the Italian allegedly 'pure' legal experience, and in highlighting the multiple ingredients of its complex recipe. More generally, the 'mixed jurisdictions' perspective may help put countries belonging to civil law legal family in context, and lead to a better understanding not only of the dynamic relationships between this family and other legal families, but also of the cross-fertilization phenomena which endlessly take place within and beyond family borders.

Keywords: Comparative law, Italian legal system, legal history

JEL Classification: K00