Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper aims at presenting some considerations on the issue of borders and migrations, carried out from the perspective of normative political theory. The author maintains that States possess a prima facie right of sovereignty on their borders, although this right has limitations: for example, States have the duty of opening their borders to people risking their lives, and lose their right to non-interference from other States when they carry out criminal behaviors or unacceptable violations of human rights.

This essay foregrounds the relevance of Italian jurist Santi Romano’s theorizing to today’s political and legal debates on the relation between state and non-state laws. As Romano’s classic book L’ordinamento giuridico (1917–1918) has finally been translated into English, the Anglophone readership can take stock of one of the most enlightening contributions to institutional thinking in the last centuries.

How should the state face the challenge of radical pluralism? How can constitutional orders be changed when they prove unable to regulate society? Santi Romano, Carl Schmitt, and Costantino Mortati, the leading figures of Continental legal institutionalism, provided three responses that deserve our full attention today. Mariano Croce and Marco Goldoni introduce and analyze these three towering figures for a modern audience.