Tuesday, July 13, 2010

History of Dogmata Iuris

[Thanks to the European Society for Comparative Legal History, we have the following notice for the International School of Ius Commune, which meets in Sicily on October 8-14 on the topic “History of dogmata iuris - dogmata iuris in the History.” More information here.]

At the center of attention for this year’s School is the problem of the possibility and utility of thinking and writing a history of private law using specific terms. Such a history would focus on individual legal concepts and principles (figurae) as dominium and obligatio and on the history of a sistema iuris within which the variae causarum figurae are placed within a chronological framework and within the legal systems of Europe and beyond.

From this point of view the investigation and consideration of the dogmata iuris (or figurae) ought to be placed in their historical context. However, dogmata iuris are abstract by their nature. For example, the glossators thought of them ontologically as endowed with a unchangeable and thus eternal nature. They spoke therefore of natura contractus, natura dominii etc. Since the dogmata iuris are abstract, legal historians have encountered and continue to confront grave difficulties in placing them in their historical context and in utilizing them as a signpost of an ideal value and of a variable social and political reality in time and space.

The existence of this difficulty has led to many attempts by legal historians to explore this problem, especially in the civil law world. An analysis of these efforts has stimulated some legal historians to outline adequate historiographical profiles of the dogmata iuris to give a framework within which scholars may locate their work when they explore this problem more deeply. In brief, along side the dogmata iuris as a witness and mirror of the history of circumscribed and determined times and places (dogmata iuris in history or with the expressive German phrase Dogmengeschichte), one may see a series of attempts undertaken to resolve the problem of the dogmata iuris in history (history of historiography, or to use the German word Rechtsgeschichtsschreibung). The organizers of the course propose two points of view that point to one common objective that is properly and exclusively the goal of legal history: to understand history in terms of law and jurisprudence.

In particular the Course proposes to explore if the dogmata iuris and what is written about them can indicate which was (and which can be, in the present or in the future) the level of culture of the people who have conceived and have utilized dogmata iuris as a guide, or have forgotten them, or have rejected them with distructive force. Then there is the final question: can a society be considered civil that has rejected, mocked, and smashed all models regulating relationships in society and in the field of law and rights all figurae (or categories or dogmata)?

Topics and Lecturers

Manlio Bellomo (Università di Catania, I)
“Sigismundus dogmate legum fultus”: (I) Per una storia della storiografia in tema di categorie giuridiche; (II) “Irnerius qui fuit ausus dirigere cor suum ad legem istam”. Il problema socio-politico dei “dogmata iuris”

Giovanni Chiodi (Università di Milano “Bicocca”, I)
L’interpretazione del testamento nel diritto comune: nascita e sviluppi di un metodo (I)

Emanuele Conte (Università Roma Tre, I)
Il vassallaggio medievale fra le maglie della scolastica giuridica. Un capitolo della storia del diritto comune in Europa (I)

Alessandro Corbino (Università di Catania, I)
“Iura condere” e “iura constituere” nel pensiero dei giuristi romani (I)

Anne Lefebvre-Teillard (Université Panthéon Assas, Paris, F)
“Ne pater pro filio”: la responsabilité délictuelle personnelle du mineur entre principe et réalité (I); Le droit romano-canonique: droit savant? (II)

Emma Montanos Ferrín (Universidad de La Coruña, E)
Un ejemplo de categoría jurídica pasada del derecho canónico al derecho español: el asesinato (I)

Andrea Padovani (Università di Bologna, I)
“Tenebo hunc ordinem”: metodo e struttura della lezione dei giuristi medievali dalle “Summae” al commento (I, II)

Beatrice Pasciuta (Università di Palermo, I)
Il processo come “sistema” tra ricostruzioni storiografiche ottocentesce e struttura medievale delle fonti (I)

Kenneth Pennington (Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., USA)
Legal Positivism and Natural Law (I)

Hans Schlosser (Universität Augsburg, D)
Die deutsche Rechtsgeschichtsschreibung zwischen Mythos, nationalem Pathos und richtiger methode: (I) Von der Historischen Schule bis zur Krise der Pandektistik Ende XIX. Jahrhundert; (II) Neue Wege nach 1945 (Coing, Wieacker, Thieme), die Methodendiskussion und der heutige Standort.

Alain Wijffels (Université Catholique, Louvain, B)
Early-Modern ius commune: transmitting and renewing old doctrines? (I, II)

For information and applications please write to:

Prof. Orazio Condorelli
Università di Catania
Facoltà di Giurisprudenza
via Gallo 24
I-95124 Catania
tel. 0039-095-230417
ocondorelli@lex.unict.it