Pier Giuseppe Monateri

Faculty recruitment in Italy: two sides of the moon

In Italy academic institutions are public.3 The degree students receive has a legal value conferred by the State. Universities are not really in competition with each other, so there is no market for faculty appointments. After 1968, an orgy of rules created a knotty and sometimes absurd framework. We need only recall the painful delays caused by the need to publish every step of the selection process in the Official Gazette. On the average it takes three years to confer tenure, from the time the Faculty decides, until the winner takes possession. It never takes less than two years and sometimes it takes more than six or seven years. Moreover, this knotty system, amended many times without any global thinking, shifted much of the power from the faculties to the Ministry.4

Crystal and Mud Contracts: The Theory of Contract and the Ontology of Values

The aim of this chapter is to use the evolution of Italian law as an example of a typical Latin jurisdiction that passed through different ages, characterised by the adoption of different values, in order to understand the inherent ambiguity of the legal discourse on contract and values. The chapter will proceed toward a discussion of the nature of values in the context of the theory of Comparative law. The main conclusions will be (1) that there is not a pure form of contract and (2) that in order to cope with values we need to develop a theory of legal ontologies as the main target of Comparative law.