Research tracks

The main research tracks deal with:

• normative pluralism, with regard to federal and regional models of decentralisation of public power, with special emphasis on  compared integrative pluralism, namely the interaction between domestic and supranational jurisdictions  as experienced with regional human rights courts

• legal pluralism, characterised by  the coexistence, alongside positive national law, of normative bodies and the related jurisdictional structures which belong to different legal traditions – religious, traditional, tribal, indigenous – whose effects are recognised by nation-states as long as they do not conflict with their supreme principles

• linguistic pluralism, which encompasses not only those systems in which a multilingual regime either impacts on the composition of jurisdictional bodies or implies legal pluralism – since the use of a language entails to turn to a different legal family – or both, but also the supranational EU legal order, in which linguistic pluralism affects interpretation and therefore influences adjudication

• an axiological pluralism, related to fields – usually connected to family law or with beginning and end of life issues – in which self-determination plays a fundamental role on the effectiveness of a unitary judicial intervention and can show its relevance in the identification of non-jurisdictional institutions to solve conflicts – such as ethics commissions or similar bodies – or in new expressions of legal pluralism.

further reference

• a material pluralism, as an expression of the particular nature of the policy fields determining litigation and of the subsequent need to create specialised jurisdictions, including independent authorities, or to provide for the possibility of alternative types of dispute resolution (arbitration, mediation, conciliation)

In several cases, furthermore, the same legal order has to bear the consequences of the combination of a plurality of pluralisms: normative pluralism in some federal systems (cf. North and South America and Australia) operates alongside with areas of legal pluralism of a derogatory nature and justified by the need to consider the legal heritage of indigenous populations. Normative pluralism as experienced by federal and regional systems in Europe is part of a cultural reality of linguistic pluralism affecting the organisation of the judiciary and its function as well as of an going dynamics of integrative federalism. The increasing complexities of life sciences and scientific and technological developments in medicine raise ethical issues that are to be framed in a context of axiological pluralism with significant impact of judicial solutions of conflicts. The fragmentation and specialisation of the public sector and its interaction  with private spheres in several areas are generating a transferral of adjudicatory functions to agencies and boards operating within a framework of material pluralism.