Sociology and legal decisions

Academic Year 2024/2025 - Teacher: Carlo PENNISI

Expected Learning Outcomes

The course is dedicated to the acquisition of categories, concepts and perspectives in the sociological analysis of legal decisions in their various contexts, which will contribute to the internship experience and the preparation of the dissertation.

Course Structure

The course has three main phases: the first is dedicated to an alignment of knowledge on the topics and the sharing of the necessary key concepts; the second concerns the exposition and discussion of specific contents; the third, in seminar forms, is dedicated to exercising the use of the concepts and theories exposed to the internship and thesis activities

Required Prerequisites

It is appropriate to have already passed sociology of law or, at least, some examination of sociology and law. In the first part of the course lessons and specific materials will be dedicated to align the class on the topics necessary for the following.

Attendance of Lessons

The lessons are designed to encourage face-to-face interaction which is considered part of the objectives of the course and subject to evaluation.

Detailed Course Content

Through the most recent reflections and the most reliable research proposed by sociological theory it will be a matter of deepening how the technological revolution is affecting the relationship between decisions and communication in legal proceedings.
After a phase in which the terms of the autonomy of the legal decision will be defined, the concepts of communication and decision will be treated in the light of the sociological theory of action. The aim is to show the problems that digitalization poses in the construction of social powers, in their institutionalization in cultural, economic and political terms and in the role of legal culture in this process.
The proposed materials will put students in a position to reconsider, in the third part of the course, their areas of interest and study in order to specify their sociological profile and enhance their originality, both from a scientific and operational point of view.

Textbook Information

Learning Assessment

Learning Assessment Procedures

The examinations, equivalent for attending and nonattending students, will have the following modalities:

A) It will be possible to form working groups on a theme, problem, topic, raised in the course that is considered relevant to other disciplines or thesis. Attending and nonattending students may participate in the groups. The presentation of the work will be individual and public.

B) Attendees will be asked, during the course of the course, to propose reasoned questions on what has been done so far.

The proposed questions will be discussed and reworked in the classroom. The result of the reworking will produce a list of questions that will constitute the written part for the final test for frequent and non-frequent attendees.

Homogeneous sets of four questions will be composed from this list. For the written part of the final examination it will be necessary to choose two of the four questions drawn by lot.

The oral will cover the program from the commentary on the answers formulated.

Evidently, the two modes are alternatives to each other.

Examples of frequently asked questions and / or exercises

The questions, elaborated in the manner set out in the assessment, will cover the thematic foci of the course.
The positivization of the legal system
The sociological dimension of proceedings and their relationship to legally recognizable decisions
The concept of decision, the difference from choice and its relationship to communication

Degree Course in

Sociology of networks, information and innovation