Sociology of Law

This course is aimed at providing students with the conceptual and methodological tools of sociology of law, that is, the science that investigates legal phenomena with the methods of empirical sciences; the ultimate goal being the acquisition of adequate skills to the analysis of legal phenomena from a non-dogmatic perspective.
Within this framework, much time will be dedicated to the analysis of some fundamental concepts, such as the concepts of social action and social interaction, as well as the concepts of norm, law, right (including fundamental rights), social and legal change.

- the knowledge of the fundamental concepts and the research methods of sociology of law;
- the ability to apply the skills acquired during this course to the analysis of legal phenomena;
- the ability to critically and autonomously interpret legal phenomena in a legal-sociological way (rather than in legal-dogmatic way);
- the ability to use the acquired knowledge with argumentative consistency and an adequate command of the legal-sociological technical terminology;
- the ability to undertake—in the most possible autonomous way—in-depth studies concerning law as social phenomenon by making use of a method that should combine theoretical reflection and critical observation.