Inter-University Centre for Research in Comparative Law

The Inter-University Centre for Research in Comparative Law, established in 2004 and renewed in 2017, by virtue of a collaboration agreement between the Universities of Insubria - based in Como -, Milan, Bologna and Trieste, has the specific aim of promoting the implementation of research programmes and scientific-cultural in-depth study on issues related to the birth and development of different legal terminologies operating in different systems.

In particular, the Centre intends to promote the study and research in the following areas:

• interpretation, in national systems, of legislative acts coming from supranational and external sources using lexicons different from the national one;
• circulation of legal and technical languages;
• legal translation and linguistic communication between operators belonging to different legal systems;
• intercultural training;
• problems of the modernization of the legal language of systems not belonging to the Western legal tradition (with particular attention to the systems of East Asia and the Arab countries);
• problems related to the normative activities of the so-called Mixed Jurisdictions (Louisiana, Québec, Israel, South Africa, Puerto Rico, Philippines, etc.).

The Centre promotes the study of the legal terminology of languages within the departments of the legal area of the member universities through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. To this end, the Center promotes courses in legal terminology, summer courses open to university students, professionals and professionals who apply for them, and initiatives that allow a broad exchange with teachers and students of those foreign universities who are spokespersons of the issues of choice of the Center.

The Centre is divided into four operational Units:

• at the Department of Law, Economics and Culture of the University of Insubria;
• at the Department of Private Law and History of Law of the University of Milan;
• at the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna;
• at the Department of Legal Studies, Language, Interpretation and Translation of the University of Trieste.

The other bodies of the Centre are: the Scientific Council, the Executive Committee, the Scientific Director.
The administrative seat of the Centre is at the University of Insubria.

Since 2004, the Inter-University Centre for Research in Comparative Law has organized annual Summer Schools in Comparative Law, with the main objective of studying in depth issues of comparative interest, with particular attention to the linguistic and translation aspects. Over the years, both general and monographic issues have been addressed. The initiative wanted to offer students and PhD students, but also practical jurists in the field, an opportunity to reflect on issues related to intercultural and interlinguistic dialogue. The teaching, carried out in English, was entrusted to Italian and foreign professors.

At the University of Insubria, Como, the Summer School in Comparative Law has been held continuously since 2004. Each year, after a methodological introduction, several topics of comparative interest were covered, such as "Fundamental Institutions of American Private Law", "ComparativeLaw and Climate Change", "Critical Topics in Environmental Law in Comparative Perspective".

At the University of Bologna, Summer schools were organized continuously from 2006 to 2014, with the only exception of 2013. In Bologna, without prejudice to the comparative methodology, particular attention was paid to Chinese law. Various issues related to contemporary Chinese law were addressed, such as "Law and Business", "Law and Language: Problems of Legal Translation to and fromChinese", "Intellectual Property Rights in Chinese Contemporary Law". In the organization of the Summer Schools in Como, he availed himself of the collaboration of the Louisiana State University of Baton Rouge (Louisiana-USA), the William S. Boyd School of Law (Nevada) and the University of California at Davis-Law School. In Bologna, we have collaborated with the China University of Political Sciences and Law (CUPL) in Beijing, the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing, Dongguan University of Technology in Dongguan, Guandong, Henan Normal University in Xinxiang, Hennan. Since 2007, Russian students from the St. Petersburg Academy also participate in the Summer School in Como.

In addition to the Summer Schools mentioned above, the Centre's activities have taken the form of conferences and study days on language, translation and technical-legal terminology, as well as cooperation in the presentation of projects on the subject at national and international level. These include, in recent years, the third national congress of the Italian Society for Research in Comparative Law (SIRD), "Categories and terminologies of law in the perspective of comparison", held at the University of Insubria, Como, on March 14-15, 2014, whose proceedings were published, edited by B. Pozzo and M. Graziadei, in 2015 by the publishing house Giuffré (Milan), and the workshop "Comparing legal languages and creating common/uniform terminologies", held in Bologna, at the Law School of the University of Bologna, on 18 February 2016, whose proceedings, edited by M. Palmirani and A. Carpi, are currently being published.