Courses a.y. 2024/2025
I basically teach legal argumentation theory and economic analysis of law (or law and economics, with a different focus).
One idea is to look at the place of economic arguments in law, and point out what their justification conditions are. Many scholars, in fact, contribute to the “economics of law”, while just a few focus on what we may call “economics in law”, i.e. the use of economic arguments in legal practice and decision-making. I like to provide students with cases of this sort and discuss them.
Biographical note
I am a Full Professor of Philosophy of Law at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
I have a Law Degree from the University of Ferrara, Italy, and a PhD in Philosophy of Law from the University of Turin, Italy, and in Epistemology from the University of Paris XII, France.
Before joining Bocconi, I spent some time as a researcher at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in the Department of Philosophy.
I work at the intersection of law, philosophy, and economics.
About
I’ve edited with C. Dahlman (Lund) and A. Stein (Supreme Court of Israel) the following collection of essays:
Philosophical Foundations of Evidence Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming 2021.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/philosophical-foundations-of-ev…
It’s going to be a landmark volume, with 26 contributions by scholars from different countries and continents, engaging with philosophical issues about evidence in law.
Research interests
My research interests include evidence, epistemology, pragmatism, argumentation theory, philosophy of law, and economic analysis of law.
Over the last years I’ve been working on legal argumentation theory, especially with Damiano Canale. Hopefully, we will publish an English book with our major contributions to that.
Presently I’m working on a project I call “The Reasoned Proof”. The basic idea is to look at evidence and proof (in law) as a matter of inference and argument-building, to provide reasons for a factual standpoint. I’ve published several pieces on this, and I plan to collect them in a book.
In the next future I will also continue my work on the philosophical foundations of the economic analysis of law.
Selected Publications
Inevitable ignorance as a standard for excusability: an epistemological analysis
SYNTHESE, 2021
Assessment criteria or standards of proof? An effort in clarification
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND LAW, 2020
Calabresi and Mill: bilateralism, moral externalities and value pluralism
GLOBAL JURIST, 2019
Analogical reasoning and extensive interpretation
ARSP. ARCHIV. FUR RECHTS- UND SOZIALPHILOSOPHIE, 2017