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Dr. Valerio Nitrato Izzo

Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Curriculum Vitae

Valerio Nitrato Izzo studied Law at the University of Naples Federico II as well as Legal Theory at the European Academy of Legal Theory in Brussels. In 2009, he received his PhD at the University of Naples Federico II with a thesis entitled “Disagreement and Ethical Pluralism in the Complexity of Legal Interpretation”. From 2010 to 2013, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Dr. Nitrato Izzo participated in several research projects, such as the FARO project “Human Dignity. The Recognition of Rights in Multicultural Societies” as well as the project “Courthouse Architecture and Access to Law and Justice: The Case of Family and Child Courts in Portugal”. Currently, he is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Law at the University of Naples Federico II and a member of the research project “TRA.sformazioni M.etropolitane. The City as Political Space. Urban Fabric and Body Politic: The Crisis of a Metaphor” (TRAM). Valerio Nitrato Izzo’s research is focused on the topics law and the city as a space of justice, courthouse architecture, moral dilemmas and tragic cases in law, law and catastrophe, as well as law and literature, among others. In June 2015, he was Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture”.

Research Project

Three (Italian) Views of the City: Looking for the Legal Culture of the Urban in Calvino, Pasolini and Rosi

My research project considers the significance of the work of three Italian authors who critically inquire the relationship between law and the city. Italo Calvino's body of work and especially his book Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities) and the novel La speculazione edilizia (The Urban Speculation) are extremely fascinating as they allow a better understanding of contemporary challenges to rethink the urban crisis and the quest for a new legal culture of the city. The intricate and complex scenario vividly depicted by Calvino seems to perfectly fit the transformations of the contemporary urban form. While Calvino has been mostly a writer, I will also try to investigate the legal relationship between law and the city through other media forms and especially movies and documentaries. To do so I will look at two other Italian directors and authors, Francesco Rosi and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In Rosi's famous movie Le mani sulla città (Hands over the City) (1963) he analyses the story of urban speculation on the city of Naples at the time of introducing a new urban planning for its growing and expanding urban context. Pasolini's body of work is vast and touches multiple domains of art (poetry, literature, cinema, essays). In this research I use as a primary source the short documentary La forma della città (The Shape of the City) (1974), in which he reflects on the loss of the “classical perfection of the city of Orte, (near Rome)” due to the growing of different elements that disturb this classical harmony of form and homogeneity. If there is a common crisis between law and the city it departs from the problem of the intersection and reciprocal interaction between space and law. From this point of view it is possible to highlight a common link between the contributions of Calvino, Pasolini and Rosi. In different ways, they all reflect on the crisis of the regulation of the urban space.

Selected Publications

  • Law, State and the Politics of Catastrophes: a Critical Perspective on Epiphanies of Injustice and the Need for Protection, in: Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 3, 2, 2013, available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2221287.
  • The Difficult Government of Catastrophe. Notes for a Critical Theory, in: Governare la paura, 2013, ottobre, pp. 157-175, available at: http://governarelapaura.unibo.it/article/view/4113/3542.
  • Entre arquitetura e literatura: uma perspetiva interdisciplinar sobre direito e justiça (Between Architecture and Literature: an Interdisciplinary Perspective on Law and Justice), in: Patrícia Branco (ed.): Sociologia do(s) Espaço(s) da Justiça. Diàlogos Interdisciplinares, Coimbra: Almedina 2013, pp. 89-102.
  • Scelte tragiche e dignità umana: sulla giustificazione del rischio in situazioni estreme (Tragic Choices and Human Dignity: on the Justification of Risk in Extreme Situations), in: Angelo Abignente, Francesca Scamardella (eds.): Dignità della persona. Riconoscimento dei diritti nelle società multiculturali, Napoli: Editoriale Scientifica 2013, pp. 217-242.
  • Beyond Consensus: Law, Disagreement and Democracy, in: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 25, 4, 2012, pp. 563-575.
  • Prima della verità: il governo del disaccordo tra diritto e giustizia (Before Truth: the Government of Disagreement between Law and Justice), in: Alberto Pirni (ed.): Verità del potere, potere della verità, Pisa: ETS 2012, pp. 143-151.
  • Entre a forma e a função: arquitectura judiciária e acesso ao direito e à justiça nos tribunais com competência em família e menores (Between Form and Function: Judicial Architecture and Access to Law and Justice in Family and Child Courts, with Patrícia Branco, Paula Casaleiro, João Pedroso, Cláudia Pozzi), in: Lex Familiae, 15, 2011, pp. 33-56.
  • I corpi contesi e l'ultima parola: sul conflitto permanente tra legislazione e giurisdizione (Contested Bodies and the Last Word: on the permanent Conflict between Legislation and Jurisdiction), Kainos - rivista on line di Critica Filosofica 2010, available at: http://www.kainos.it/numero9/sommario9.html.
  • Catastrophes as Crime Scenes: Analysing the Legal Context, in: Law Text Culture, 13, 2009, pp. 108-134.
  • Le “Porte aperte” del giudizio (The “Open Doors” of Judgement), in: Felice Casucci (ed.): Diritto di parola. Saggi di diritto e letteratura, Napoli: Esi 2009, pp. 279-296.
  • Interprétation, musique, droit : performance musicale et exécution des normes juridiques (Interpretation, Music, Law: Musical Performance and Execution of Legal Norms), in: Revue Interdisciplinaire d'études Juridiques, 58, 2007, pp. 99-128.