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Filippo Annunziata Invited to Leuven for the Global Week

, by Andrea Costa
Bocconi's increasing reputation in legal science is reflected in the request to teach a module of the Global Law course. Separately, a new literary venture is under way

The Flemish university of Leuven invites every year a small number of carefully selected foreign law and criminology professors to teach the "Global Law" course. The course is part of the university's Master program and is intended to give students a broad perspective on different legal systems.

Filippo Annunziata, Professor of Financial Markets and Banking Legislation at Bocconi's Department of Legal Studies, has been invited to hold the module on EU Banking and Financial Legislation: the Evolving Role of the Jurisprudence of EU Courts for the academic year 2022-23. The teaching will take place during the "Global Week" of 14-18 November 2022.

"I am very pleased, both on a personal level and for Bocconi," says Professor Annunziata, "as you do not volunteer for this course. It is by invitation only and until recently Bocconi's standing in this area was still behind that of some more traditionally established legal studies departments. No longer."

Global, or comparative, law is at the center of another endeavor of the eclectic Filippo Annunziata, who is the author of a novel, Obiter Dicta, due to be published in November. The plot is inspired by the late scholar Gino Gorla (1906-1982), who was during his life one of the leading authorities in comparative law as well as an example of moral and professional integrity.

The novel, set during the pandemic-induced lockdown, is a fictionalized account of a young law student who, in close contact with a retired professor, casually stumbles into unpublished notes by Gorla at Rome's Unidroit library (where Gorla's documents are kept in real life). These notes reinforce Gorla's lifetime opinion that Civil Law and Common Law are in fact much closer to one another than they are routinely assumed to be, a position which runs against the current academic orthodoxy. The ensuing events provide a few twists and turns, which make the book appealing to the general public.