I’m Marie-Curie research fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Law (Eurostorie), University of Helsinki. I’m particularly interested in explaining how the information age is changing our thinking about the legal past. I’ll be developing a project on this theme at the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt beginning from January 2020.

 

Research focus

I have a combined interest in legal history and legal theory.

In legal history my research focuses on late-medieval and early-modern European continental law with particular reference to judicial reasoning, and have written on presumption, interpretation, judicial discretion, multinormativity and others.

In legal theory I am particularly interested in the 20th century philosophical concern with judge-made law, from the Freirechtsschule to the various versions of anti-formalism of the period 1930-60.

In my most recent research I seek to explain how legal history interacts with the broader context of legal science, showing how this discipline is dependent from changing theoretical frameworks. This research, partly published (see here), is growing into a book (tentatively) entitled “Legal history seeking a theory. Three paradigms of law: Savigny, Kantorowicz and Glenn.”

Another stream of research (InfoLaw) examines how the information age is changing our ways of thinking about the legal past.

Background

I earned a PhD in legal history from Cambridge University with a dissertation on 16th c. theory of presumptions. My background is in law (Italian laurea cum laude) and political theory/intellectual history (MSc LSE 2000 and MPhil Cambridge 2001). I also received a PhD in EU private law (Macerata 2013).

Influences: antiformalism, Alessandro Giuliani, Michel Villey, Peter Stein, Chaïm Perelman, John Gray, Emanuel Hurwitz.

For my publications see my SSRN and departmental page.