Cermeg

CERMEG
Research Center
on Legal Methodology

CERMEG – Research Centre on Legal Methodology – came into being on the initiative of a group of scholars of the philosophy of law working at universities in north-eastern Italy, the intention being to share experiences in the field of legal reasoning.

The idea of creating a network of scientific collaboration on methodology in legal sciences originated mainly from symposia entitled “Giornate Tridentine di Retorica” (helded in Trento, Department of Legal Sciences, since 2000) and a series of seminars organized in collaboration with the practicing laywers associations (Consiglio Nazionale Forense, Unione delle Camere Penali Italiane) as well as other professionals involved directly (judges and prosecutors) or indirectly (journalists, experts on communication) in application of the law.

Evident in all these cases is the influence of methodological issues on concrete practice in the exercise of justice, and also their markedly interdisciplinary nature, given that they concern the various areas of legal science (jurisprudence, philosophy and history of law, criminal law, civil law, constitutional law, labour law, etc.) as well as broad sectors of non-legal inquiry (logic, epistemology, history of science, literature, sociology, etc.).

For these reasons, after careful assessment of the resources available, it was decided to take the institutional option of creating a research centre – both inter- and extra-university– able to accommodate the contributions of scientists and experts.