Italian Comparative: a Trait of the Legal System

The cultural environment of Italian academia was open to suggestions that came from other legal systems and shaped an eclectic legal culture. Italy is an hybrid system that took the code from France, the legal science from Germany, and has always been receptive of foreign suggestions. This cultural background may explain why the Italian legal curriculum requires a mandatory course of comparative law and why comparative law has been an important field of Italian legal research. At the same time, comparative law was characterized by an an important mark of antiformalism, necessary to swim through the times of Fascism and post Fascism. The article will highlight the main features of Italian comparative since its birth, and its connection with other fields of legal inquiry, such as critical legal studies, law and economics and harmonization of European law.