Teacher
Dott.ssa Elisabetta Corapi
Objectives
At the end of the course, students:
1) will have acquired knowledge of the key institutions of the anglo american common law tradition in a comparative (civil law) and historical perspective;
2) will be able to reason about key institutions of private law taken as developed in the common law experience;
3) will be able to reason about the influence of the common law on other legal systems with special focus both on common law/civil law divergence and convergence and on peculiarities of various cases of mixed jurisdictions (such as: hong kong, israel, cyprus, malta, quebec, south africa);
4) will be able to discuss (in class with a powerpoint presentation and/or in a paper) real and/or hypothetical cases taken from the common law experience.
Program
a) The first part of the course focuses on key institutions of english and american common law from a civil lawyer perspective and will start from their structural characteristics as derived from their historical evolution.
b) The second part of the course will deal with a number of institutes related to private law chosen each academic year among: contract, torts, property and trust, in order to compare them with the corresponding institutions of italian law, as part of the western legaltradition.
c) The third part of the course will analyse some cases of mixed jurisdictions. In order to illustrate the form of legal pluralism which is the historic legacy of colonialism or of close geographic ties: a number of jurisdictions have a state legal system drawing on both the civil and common law traditions.
The specific issues are:
(each one is around two hours lesson)
1) Common Law vs Civil Law
2) Forms of Action in early English Law
3) Equity
4)Trust (general overview+ students/teacher presentations)
5) Stare Decisis and the Judicial Reforms
6) Legal professions in UK
7) Contract in the English Legal System
8) Students/teacher presentations on Contract Law
9) U.S. Constitution- Bill of Rights- Federalism
10) Federal Court System-Marbury vs Madison. The birth of Judicial Review
11) State Court System
12) Adversarial Process
13) Jury: legal movie “12 Angry Men”
14) Judges- Rule of Law
15) Supreme Court
16) Legal Realism- Law Schools and US Lawyers
17) Mixed Jurisdictions introduction.
18) Students/teacher presentations: Hong Kong- Malta- Israel
19) Student/ teacher presentations: Cyprus- Québec- South Africa
20) Final review- written exercitation
Suggested readings
Suggested readings:
For attending students:
selected readings will be given during the course for specific topics.
For non attending students:
– J. Baker, Introduction to english legal history, Oxford university press, 2019, part. i: cap.1-12 (english Legal system) and part. 2 cap.18-20 (on contract)
– E. A. Farnsworth, an introduction to the legal system of the united states, IV ed., Oxford university press 2010, part. I
– J. Du Plessis, Comparative law and the study of mixed legal systems, in the Oxford handbook of comparative law , edited by M. Reimann and R. Zimmermann, 2019, part. II cap. 17.
Further readings:
J.E.Merryman, On the convergence (and divergence) of the civil law and the common law, 17 stan. j. int’l l. 357 (1981);
-T. Weir, The common law system, international encyclopedia of comparative law, volume II, chapter 2, part III (jcb mohr) (completed 1971);
-J. Samuel, A short introduction to the common law, Elgar publishing, 2013;
-P. Atiyah – r. Summers, Form and substance in anglo-american law, Oxford university press, 1987;
-T. Honoré, About law. An introduction, Oxford university press, 1996;
-P.H. Glenn, legal traditions of the world. Sustainable diversity in law, Oxford university press, 2014.
Other information
Teaching methods:
the course is tailored to stimulate active student participation and thought-sharing. during the classes these specific activities are foreseen:
a) legal movie and class discussion
b) single student presentations
c) written class exercises
Attendance policy:
class attendance is strongly advised
the activities that require class participation are most formative.
Evaluation:
for attending students: evaluation will be based on class work, class participation, case presentations given during the lessons and a final written multiple choice and/or open-answer paper examination on the topics covered during the lessons.
For non attending students: evaluation will be based on a final written and/or oral examination.
Prerequisites :
in order to attend the course students are required to have a basic knowledge of the key institutions of private law and public law.