11 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 1 (2025)
The Italian Legal Imaginary – Inside, Outside or Upside Down? Learning From the History of a Journal
by Camilla Crea This article uses the anecdote of ‘Columbus’ egg’ – in its lesser-known literary version by Piero da Niccolò di Filicaia, concerning an anonymous architect and a dispute over the construction of a bridge – as a metaphor for reflecting on the ten-year journey of The Italian Law Journal. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
Two major epistemological turns within the national context are explored, both of which have profoundly reshaped the discursive field of law in the Italian tradition. Although not the only such shifts, they are strategic, particularly in their impact on private law. The first is the national constitutionalization of private law, which has obliged legal scholars to confront the disruptive potential of constitutional principles, demystifying the hegemony of ‘rules’ and the Code, and opening legal interpretation to values and principle-based reasoning. The second is the rise of comparative legal studies, which has broken the isolation of national law and liberated legal thought from the constraints of authority and nationalist narcissism.
Within each of these epistemological shifts, the article identifies distinct postures and critical moves, some of which aspire to even more radical transformations. Together, these turns have contributed to emancipating legal thought from the ‘legal comfort zone’ of formalism and dogmatic structures, revealing a complex and evolving Italian legal imaginary that embraces legal pluralism, cognitive openness, and cross-border dialogue.
While structural, linguistic, and disciplinary barriers persist, hindering fully dialogical and bidirectional crossings of this cultural bridge, the journal helps make the Italian legal tradition – in its diversity and plurality – less invisible and more capable of active participation in critical legal discourse, even as it remains at the margins of the global context.
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