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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Will to Order: In Conversation with Mariano Croce and Marco Goldoni on Costantino Mortati’s Account of the Legal Order and the Material Constitution

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In this article, taking my cue from the insightful analyses contained in the book The Legacy of Pluralism, by Mariano Croce and Marco Goldoni, I reconstruct in outline Costantino Mortati’s conceptions of the law as a legal order and of the material constitution. I focus on the problems pointed out by Croce and Goldoni: the emergence of legal normativity, the problem of radical pluralism, and the role of jurists vis-à-vis politics. In sections II, III, and IV, I describe the general framework that, however much detailed and adjusted over time, Mortati adamantly maintained from his earlier works in the 1930s to his last ones in the mid-1970s. In section V, I describe the significant shifts that took place in the way he fine-tuned his general framework in an attempt to capture the changing events of Italian politics. On the basis of my account, I will argue in favor of an interpretation of the view Mortati had of the role of jurists vis-à-vis politics significantly different from the one defended by Croce and Goldoni.