Turin’s Unit

The aim of the research unit of Turin is to investigate the strategies and the narrative discourse (didactic, rhetorical, satirical, dramatic, remedial and polemical discourses) used by the governing elite to legitimize – politically and legally – the English Common Law and its history.
The purpose is to demonstrate that the term ‘diversity’ is susceptible to a broader interpretation than the usual one: not only in an ‘endo-systemic’ sense, to connote negatively the status of minority groups or subjects, ruled by discriminatory measures and so perceived as ‘the others’, but also in an ‘extra-systemic’ sense, to depict positively the reasons of the uniqueness of a particular legal system for its origins and its development. The different meanings of this word are united by the link to ideological discourses, functional to peculiar projects of cultural and political governance. The critical approach will show the real interests at the stake.
 

At this aim the research is divided into two parts: the first with a historical content; the second with a practical perspective.
At first the research group will stress the essence of the Common Law as “diversity connected to the Institutions”: in the background of the stark struggle of the Powers at the stake: Crown, Barons, Gentry and Church and in the opposition to the coeval continental models. A specific attention will be focused on the role played by the Common Lawyers in embodying the content of the ‘Early Modern English Constitution’ and on their peculiar interpretation of the Common Law as manifestation of natural order or divine judgment, rather than as a codified body of positive law. The biblical, scriptural ground of the origins of the Common Law makes this Law a different incarnation of the Law of Christendom. At first the will stress the essence of the : in the background of the stark struggle of the Powers at the stake: Crown, Barons, Gentry and Church and in the opposition to the coeval continental models. A specific attention will be focused on the role played by the Common Lawyers in embodying the content of the ‘Early Modern English Constitution’ and on their peculiar interpretation of the , rather than as a codified body of positive law. The biblical, scriptural ground of the origins of the Common Law makes this Law a different incarnation of the Law of Christendom. 

   

               
Then the research group will review the conventional reconstruction of the Common Law’s diversity and uniqueness through the medium of the opposition and the resistance to the Roman Law. It will attempt to cast light on the ideological nature of this antagonistic representation founded on ideological images of the opposite poles. Particularly it will highlight the cultural and politic reasons that form the basis both of the Roman and Common Law tradition as literary packages and of their root opposition, moulding form and substance mainly through the use of the metaphor of the “Holy Body” (corpus iuris vs the Temple as the corporate fraternity of the Lawyers).
At this regard the research group will consider if England provides another variation on the theme of the infiltration of the Roman legal ideas into European legal culture. In fact, while there may have been some limited acquaitance with Roman Law in the Anglo-Saxon period, it is not until the middle of the XII century that we begin to find evidence of detailed study of Roman legal texts.
This study is based on a critical interpretation of the sources, coordinating the legal materials (academic treatises, parliamentary petitions, statutes) and literary texts to assess their influence on the English political consciousness in medieval and modern times.

  
At the end the analysis will develop the theme of the gap between the coeval representation and the rhetorical strategies that built a ’standard model’ for the history of English Law since the early-seventeenth century. The group’s research project will also investigate some of the most common strategies to legitimize the power of colonial rulers within a Common law context.