About the Journal

New journals are usually founded for many reasons: to open still-untrodden paths of research or reflection; to respond to the demands of a specific sector, whether scientific or practical; to revive past initiatives that deserve to be proposed anew; to give voice to the needs of a certain time or generation; or to enter into dialogue, or dialectic, with other cultural venues of scholarly depth. This list could go on. Moreover, now more than ever, scientific journals—and not only in the legal field—are exceedingly numerous.

Antologia di Diritto Pubblico (ADP) also has its own inspirations, which can already be glimpsed in the simple explanation of its contents. This publishing initiative was established thanks to a fruitful collaboration between scholars from two different academic institutions: the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento and the Department of Economics and Business Studies of the University of Eastern Piedmont.

The journal, which is digital and semi-annual, intends to collect and republish classic individual contributions to public law disciplines—both Italian and foreign—accompanying them with critical essays of commentary or reinterpretation. Hence the distinction of each issue into two parts, the first one dedicated to a classic text offered once again to the attention of legal scholars (“The Text”), and the second one featuring the related articles through which colleagues from diverse backgrounds engage with the classic text (“Readings and Interpretations”).

It is an operation that is simple in its own way, yet it finds no equivalent on the national landscape at present.

At first glance, this fact might seem surprising, since engaging with the Masters of the legal tradition and their teachings is a typical custom of the jurist and of the communities (schools, research groups, societies, or scientific institutes, etc.) with which they usually identify.

Each jurist, after all, has their own reference anthology: a gallery of authors or works that have been important for their intellectual and professional growth, or to which they periodically return to take stock of the steps taken—personally or by their community—as well as to find inspiration or ideas for new beginnings.

Therefore, the primary purpose of ADP is to create a public and easily accessible space—online and in Open Access—to share that custom and the reflections it usually fosters, and to demonstrate that dialogue with the works of those who preceded us is highly useful and fruitful. This is not so much because one expects to find in those works the answers to the ever-surprising, and no less complicated, questions that reality presents to us; rather, it is because the sense of friction, or even distance, that such a dialogue can create often serves the same function as ploughing a field. The worthy knowledge and techniques that jurists accumulate over time can form clods of earth that need to be turned over and oxygenated. In this way, the substrate becomes fertile and hospitable again, and thus ready to respond with promptness and awareness even to the most original and unprecedented demands.

In this perspective, ADP also has a second purpose: moving from the desire to disseminate and discuss salient moments in the history of public law thought, the journal favours, as previously anticipated, a specific methodological approach for the study of constitutional and administrative law.

It could be summarized by recalling an ancient Egyptian tale, used by Pietro de Francisci as the opening of a well-known paper (P. de Francisci, Dogmatica e storia nell’educazione giuridica, in Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto, No. 3/1923, IV, 373 ff., also in Questioni di metodo. Diritto romano e dogmatica odierna. Saggi di Pietro de Francisci e di Emilio Betti. Appendici di Gabrio Lombardi, Giuliano Crifò e Giorgio Luraschi, Como, New Press, 1997, 2nd ed., 1 ff.).

It is the story of a king’s son, “a lover of wisdom, who spent his days in the immense necropolises of Memphis to study the sacred texts and to read the inscriptions that covered the monuments and temple walls.” One day, while “wandering in the atrium of the temple of Ptah” (the creator deity of the world and, among other things, the master of justice), the king’s son met “a character of noble appearance,” who “approached him with an ironic smile”: “Why do you laugh at me? the prince asked him. I would not want to laugh at you – the other replied – but I cannot restrain myself, seeing how you stand here deciphering writings that have no power, whereas if you wished to read effective writings, you would do well to come with me” (Ibid., 373, italics in the original).

To stay within the terms of the story, ADP aims to continue cultivating our visits to the temple, and thus to urge public law scholars not to let themselves be excessively distracted by “effective writings”—that is to say, by the allure of what appears most contingent or by the charm of scientific responses (and relationships) that would seem to answer the most immediate needs of institutions or rulers.

There is no doubt that public law is a large part of what is usually ascribed to the category of instrumenta regni, but it is equally true that its richness is found in the sedimented experiences of limiting and guiding power, and in the legacy of those who thought through and rationalized those experiences. For the public law scholar—as perhaps for all jurists—legal doctrine itself is, first and foremost, the primary and inescapable baggage to be carried, and to be used especially when facing new challenges. If one were to embark on an adventurous journey of research while forgetting one’s baggage, one would soon fall into the trap of the eternal present. This trap is particularly insidious when exploring themes that did not exist until the recent past, but which nevertheless deserve to be examined in the light of older doctrine. Otherwise, one would risk discovering with wonder what has long been known, much like what happens in the first years of life.

It is therefore highly salutary to wander, like the protagonist of the Egyptian story, among the columns of the building that one's discipline has built over time. It is no coincidence that the editorial to be published at the beginning of each issue has been conceived as the presentation of the subsequent one (or rather, as a presentation of the subsequent classic), as if to suggest that—as it always happens when turning to the voices of other jurists—one reading leads to another. Because one Master recalls another; or because every topic, old or new, has an interlocutor to be taken into account; or simply because, quite prosaically, works always stand side by side, as in a library.

ADP also has other characteristics, which can be inferred from the composition and structure of its editorial bodies.

By this, we do not mean the various quasi-bureaucratic issues that every new publishing initiative must face and manage to be accredited within the scientific community. These matters are addressed in the Regulations and the Code of Ethics that ADP has adopted, which can be easily consulted on the journal website.

We simply wish to highlight the presence, among the Directors, the Editorial Board, and the Editorial Secretariat, of scholars belonging to the various sectors of Italian public law, as well as the participation in the Scientific Committee of colleagues who are not public law scholars, but have always demonstrated a particular sensitivity to interdisciplinary dialogue and to an all-round conception of law and the jurist’s experience. Scrolling through the names of the members of the journal’s bodies, it is easy to note the presence of people of different ages, both chronological and academic. This is certainly customary for a scientific journal, but in the case of ADP it takes on the additional meaning of fostering intergenerational dialogue, which is particularly precious when it comes to keeping alive the teaching of the Masters who preceded us, so that we may see further by standing on their shoulders.

Thus, ADP does not merely aspire to be a well-organized journal. Above all, it aims to serve as a point of reference—susceptible to continuous integration and enrichment—for all scholars who feel the need to recognize themselves in a legal community that is open and conscious of its past, committed to protecting its legacy and enhancing its persistent potential, not only on the level of historical and dogmatic research, but also from an epistemological point of view. This is, of course, also an invitation to take an active part in the planning and life of the journal and of every initiative (seminars, conferences, studies, research, teaching, dissemination) that may be realized through it.

Moreover, ADP will not limit itself to republishing only relatively short pieces. The mission of this journal also includes the publication, as an independent special issue (“Classici in collana”) and at least biennially, of another type of broader publications (such as monographs or edited volumes). It also aims to create a solid and living network connecting all publishing initiatives that may recognize in the methodological approach of ADP a space for academic relations and opportunities for comparison and discussion.

At the end of this brief self-portrait, which presents all the approximations of a journal at its inception, it is impossible to omit expressions of gratitude.

For ADP would never have been conceived without the enthusiastic response of those who agreed to form its Editorial Board and Scientific Committee. Above all, ADP would not have found the strength to express itself fully without the active help of the members of the Editorial Secretariat, and without the invaluable advice of Dr. Gianna Adami, head of the Scientific Publications Office of the University of Trento, and the precise technical oversight of Dr. Fabio Serafini, her collaborator.

We dedicate this debut to all the allies of this small collective enterprise, in the hope of soon receiving feedback from friends and colleagues, and of being able to contribute, as far as possible, to the maintenance of the knowledge that has been handed down to us and which we strive so hard to protect and illustrate. 

 

Trento - Novara, September 15, 2023

 

Massimo Cavino – Fulvio Cortese – Matteo Cosulich