Professor of Applied Legal Theory, Coordinator of the PhD program in Law in the 2015-2025 decade, J.D and PhD at the Scuola Sant’Anna. A professor since 1987, he taught Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory first at the Law Faculty of Pisa and thereafter at the University of Parma. Member of the Academic Senate and Director for almost a decade of the Department of Law & Social Studies in Parma, he was a visiting fellow at several Law Schools, including Yale, Northwestern in Chicago, and others.
He was “F. Braudel” Professorial Fellow at the European University Institute (2006-7); Invited Research Fellow at the UNSW in Sydney (2007); “MacCormick” Fellow, at the Law School of the University of Edinburgh (2011). For the academic year 2009-10 he was awarded the Inaugural Fellowship of the Straus Institute of Law and Justice at the New York University Law School; in 2013 he was awarded the Distinguished Global Governance Professorial Fellowship at the Schuman Center (EUI). A member of the editorial or scientific board of a number of academic journals in Italy and abroad (Law and Philosophy, the Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, Krytyka Prawa, Moscow State U. Kutafin Law Review, and others), he has lectured widely throughout Italian academic venues and many countries, including the United States, the UK, Russia, Australia, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Spain, and so forth.
His first steps as an author focused upon the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, thereafter the legal philosophy of the Scottish empiricism (David Hume). In those years he published a few books: Herbert Marcuse 1928-55 (1982, De Donato); Diritto e artificio in David Hume (1984, Giuffré); Immaginazione e grado nella teoria kantiana del soggetto, in “Unità e sapere del soggetto” con D. Corradini (1984, Giuffré); Stato dei partiti e complessità sociale (1989, ESI); Soggetti, azioni e norme (1990, Franco Angeli). Subsequently, he has focused on constitutional law and democracy, the theory of rights, the rule of law, and global governance. In the latest years he has worked on a renewed theory of law and the relations among legal orders, reframing the concept of inter-legality. After writing a renowned general work of reference, Filosofia del diritto (1996, Cedam) (translated into Spanish and Portuguese), he was also known to the wider public for his book Costituzione e sovranità. Il senso della democrazia costituzionale (1997, Dedalo; Spanish edition 1999). His single author volumes from that time on: L’autorità dei diritti (2002, Laterza; Spanish edition 2005); Dopo la certezza. Il diritto in equilibrio tra giustizia e democrazia (2006, Dedalo), E’ possibile una legalità globale? Il Rule of Law e la Governance del mondo (2012, Il Mulino), La politica come limite al diritto? Contrasti normativi oltre lo Stato (2018, ESI); and he edited three collections, on Re-locating the Rule of law (with N. Walker, Hart, Oxford 2009); The Rule of Law: Internal and External Issues (with L. Morlino, Brill, Leiden 2010); The Challenge of Inter-legality (with Jan Klabbers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019); L’era dell’interlegalità (Mulino, 2022).
He has written extensively articles in world leading scientific journals and chapters for international publishers (from Oxford to Cambridge University Press, Hart Publishers, Routledge, and several others). Along with his background research on the rule of law and fundamental rights, his latest scientific projects relates to regulation of environmental sustainability, the protection of rights and access to justice, the authoritarian undermining of the rule of law, the theory of law as challenged by the intertwined character of transnational normative legalities (inter-legality).
For a full list of publications, please click here.
