This book explores the nature of the law, discussing its underlying reasons, its origin and the different meanings it has acquired over the course of time. Diritto allo specchio is, so to speak, the law’s self-awareness, a radical inquiry which examines its historical and cultural roots: roots which are complex and cannot be reduced to univocal assumptions. For it often gives rise to the disputes which characterize its practice both in the courts of justice and in civil society.

Diritto allo specchio arose out of a didactic need: to explain what the law is to students of the human sciences. For this reason it takes us on a journey of instruction which proceeds gradually and with extreme clarity, making us feel that we are encountering a world of problems on which we have never reflected but which we need to know about, for the law is the basis of the modern state and of active citizenship. It is part of all our lives as sociable beings. ‘Ubi societas, ibi ius’, the Romans used to say: where there is society, there is law. But the contrary is also true: society needs the law in order to exist.

The book is like a novel which describes the birth, youth and development of an institution which, from antiquity to the present day, has been the quintessential symbolic expression of our civilization. For this reason it discusses all the great questions linked to the law: the state, constitutionalism, judicial norms and pluralism, punitive and reconciliatory justice, the law and its limitations. This book, by a great jurist of international fame, is a work of unusual narrative power.