Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

There are no prerequisites for the participation in the course. Participation and attendance to the course will be positively considered.

The aim of the course is to provide a basic knowledge and elements of legal
theory concerning notions of justice and science of legislation, coercion and
resistance, to enable students to develop arguments and critical reflections
on the main subjects of the course as well as to make a correct use of the
philosophical and legal language.

As a result of the course, students are expected:

-  to obtain the basic knowledge and elements of legal theory;
-  to be able to develop arguments and critical reflections on the main
subjects of the course;
-  to be able to understand and make a correct use of the philosophical and
legal language.

The course scrutinizes a 2500 year-long Western tradition on the formula of legal monsters to stress what the law is supposed to be and what the law is called to do as regards both subjects and objects of legal regulation. Today’s popularity of the formula on legal monsters among scholars, tribunals, and even presidents and first ministers of Western democracies entails the risk that the metaphor for monsters is often used for simple rhetorical purposes or employed with a certain theoretical leniency. The assumption is that such a metaphor can still play a powerful role in denouncing cases of political oppression or against normative acts whose coercion is not simply bad or wrong, but monstrous. To preserve this critical role of the metaphor, it is essential to contrast all crying wolf trends in the use of the image. The aim is to flesh out what uses make sense, are coherent, and legitimate.

Main topics:

- History of legal philosophy

- History of legal monsters as a legal metaphor

- Subjects and objects of legal regulation

- Key notions of theory of justice

- Key notions of science of legislation

- Tradition of western democracy

- Legal coercion and despotism

- Right to resist

The course consists of forty teaching hours. The course will be delivered in presence. All the materials will be made available on course webpage.

An oral exam will cover all the topics of the course. Through questioning, students are expected to prove the required theoretical knowledge of the main subjects of the course.

Ugo Pagallo, A Theory of Legal Monsters: Repression, Resistance, and Rebellion, Springer, Cham, 2026.