Il Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza (responsabile la prof.ssa Angela Condello), è partner del progetto europeo dal titolo Judicial Cultures of Independence and their meaning for the Rule of Law Compliance: Law in crisis. Capofila Università di Bonn.
Judicial independence in the European Union is increasingly exposed to structural and cultural pressures that endanger the Union’s identity as a community of law. This project conceives judicial independence not only as a constitutional safeguard, but as a culturally embedded institution situated within Europe’s plural legal traditions. Across several Member States, politicised appointments, selective disciplinary proceedings, and unequal access to justice erode the legitimacy of courts and weaken public trust. Existing EU monitoring mechanisms capture procedural deficiencies but fail to address cultural dimensions of this erosion. Therefore, the Rule of Law Crisis Framework integrates legal, cultural, and empirical indicators into a comparative tool that examines independence, impartiality, and integrity not only formally, but as they are performed and perceived in practice.
Methodologically, the project combines data from the EU Justice Scoreboard with insights from the Law as Culture paradigm, which understands law as a symbolic, ritual, and narrative practice intertwined with social values, aesthetic forms, and religious traditions. This interdisciplinary approach allows to capture how systemic vulnerabilities are shaped by cultural, gendered, racial, and class-based dimensions. It addresses implementation deficits, the erosion of legitimacy and belief, and the disconnection between expert-driven Juristenrecht and lived Volksrecht.
Outputs include a Judicial Cultures Toolkit for institutional self-assessment and resilience, to sustain monitoring and policy innovation beyond the project. Ultimately, the project argues that the crisis of the rule of law cannot be remedied through political or economic strategies alone; it requires mobilising cultural and communal resources to restore trust, legal certainty, and the independence of justice.
PARTNERS:
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Università degli studi di Messina
Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas
Uniwersytet Warszawski UNIWARSAW