Francesca Caroccia (L’Aquila/Bonn): Public Order and Private Law: Managing Cultural Conflicts in the Age of Globalization

Abstract

As a general clause, “public order” is characterized by a high degree of vagueness. Such vagueness could be a strong tool for judges, in order to increase the adaptive capacity of national legal systems. From this point of view, recourse to public order represents a good instrument to manage cultural conflicts produced by the augmented circulation of people, models, and institutions. At the same time, public order implies big risks of arbitrariness and politicization. Faced with the absence of specific legal rules (or notwithstanding the presence of explicit legal prohibitions), judges use to apply the mentioned clause when legal solutions are not sufficient. Does this demonstrate the necessity to rethink the sources of law theory?

Prof. Dr. Francesca Caroccia
Università degli Studi dell'Aquila

Curriculum Vitae

Francesca Caroccia studied law at La Sapienza University in Rome and holds a master’s degree in consumer and tort law. In 2004, she received her PhD in comparative law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Molise with a thesis on “L’interpretazione del contratto nei Principi UNIDROIT dei contratti commerciali internazionali. Regole ermeneutiche tra autonomia ed eterointegrazione”. Since 2008, Francesca Caroccia is Assistant Professor (Ricercatore universitario) in private law at the University of L’Aquila. Being active as a lawyer since 2005, she is a former consultant on juridical affairs of the Italian Minister of Internal Affairs. In 2009 and in 2015, Francesca Caroccia was Visiting Professor for international and competition law and taught private law at the University of Toulouse (France). Following a first research stay at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” from July to December 2013, she is, as of May 2016, once again Fellow in Bonn.