Our first glimpse into this year’s Digest authors explores the work and background of Mauro Guiseppe Barberis.  Professor Barberis is an Italian legal scholar focusing on history and legal theory and has published many works on the subjects.  After graduating from law school at the University of Genoa in 1980, Barberis began working at various institutes at the University of Genoa, including the Institute of Constitutional Law and Materials for a History of Legal Culture, a magazine he currently co-directs.

In 1983, Professor Barberis was granted a fellowship at the University of Calabria, where he taught seminars focusing on Constitutional Law.  While at Calabria, Barberis spent a sabbatical studying Benjamin Constant in Paris, resulting in his book Benjamin Constant: Revolution, Constitution, Progress (Princeton, Bologna, 1988).

In 1987, the University of Trieste made Barberis an associate professor of the Law School, where he taught Philosophy of Law.  Barberis published multiple articles in this post as a faculty member, including Law As Behavior (Giappichelli, Turin, 1988), Seven Studies On Revolutionary Liberalism, and Law as Speech and Like Behavior.

He also held faculty posts at the University of Bologna, and has been back to both the University of Trieste and the University of Genoa as a visiting professor, teaching on the history of Italian Law, the sociology of law, and general theory of law.  In addition to teaching, Barberis has held the post of editor for various publications including the magazine, “Il Mulino”, Political Philosophy and “Practical Reason, which he also co-founded in 1993.

Since becoming a full professor at Trieste, Barberis has published three legal text books used in many Italian universities, including Philosophy of Law: A Theoretical Introduction (Giappichelli, Turin, 2003), A Brief History of the Philosophy of the Right (Il Mulino, Bologna, 2004) and Ethics for Lawyers (Penguin, Harmondsworth Bari, 2005).  Barberis also devotes time to lecturing at various conferences and doctoral courses in Italy, Belgium, France and Spain.  He currently directs the Trieste Research Group and is working on a new legal textbook, Lawyers and Philosophers.