Luigi Ferrajoli and Luciano Vandelli awarded honorary doctorate by the UB

Iñaki Rivera started his speech remembering previous generations of researchers and activists on human rights, and specifically, paying homage to the role of Luigi Ferrajoli, as well as the Professor of the Faculty of the UB Roberto Bergalli. Rivera analysed the evolution of criminology and how Ferrajoliʼs mastership made several researchers of this discipline lead their task “to that hidden side (and sometimes obscene) which is penalty in general, and the privative thinking of freedom in particular”. Rivera went over several moments of the evolution of criminology and noted that the adaptation process of the European Higher Education Area could lead to a criminology which is not subject to criminal law but enriched by other knowledge “such as sociological categories of memory, social damage and structural violence”. He defended “a global criminology with a high critical content” focused on “criminality of the powerful ones, markets with no rules, destruction of nature, pauperization of wide layers of society, the desperate situation of migrants, refugees and dissidents who are chased due their social and political convictions, state crimes, torture and institutional violence”.

Professor Ferrajoli continued his speech on Riveraʼs idea about “a critical global criminology” to treat the systematic and structural violations of the law which have been possible due a lack of a public sphere to the level of current economic and financial powers. He mentioned these systematic violations of laws: those who die of hunger, thirst, victims of inequality and poverty, environmental destruction, and the thousands of humans who have to escape wars and misery “which are caused by the politics of the strongest countries”.

Ferrajoli defended a scientific criminology that regards crimes “apart from the severely punished actions such as criminal law crimes, but also political, economic and social phenomena that, despite not being related to the criminal responsibility of single persons, contrast with the elemental constitutional principles that are formulated in the bills and conventions on rights and fundamental goods that provide our laws”. He said that we need to call these right violations as “system crimes” and claimed the base problem is “the local character of politics and law” towards the current globalization of economy: “there has been an abdication of politics in its role of economy government and guaranty of social rights”. The answer would be “the development of a constitutionalism and guarantism new public sphere, beyond the tight localism of the policies of our national democracies”.

Defending dialogue

Tomàs Font stated the contributions by Luciano Vandelli enabled the understanding of the reasons of the current territorial, autonomic and local configuration of Southern European countries. The work by the Italian jurist, he said, “has had a decisive practical and real influence on the construction and effective development of the State of autonomies, in Italy but also in our country”. Then he glossed Vandelliʼs influence among Spanish academicians, which he described as “simply formidable”, and his important link to the UB. He highlighted Vandelliʼs “determined Europeism, his conviction of a strong but also democratic and articulated Europe, not a Europe of states, but also made of territory, regions and cities, universities, in order to be a Europe of citizens”.

Vandelli focused his speech around the concept of dialogue: “Dialogue means that every part, including the one in power, takes a side from which they can understand each other”, he said. He put emphasis on the growing importance of dialogue in several fields of public law: “in short, the thesis I would like to propose is that radical transformations of public law, and especially in administrative law, in the last fifty years (since I started working on the study of law) can be related to the irruption of orders -or in other words, in the orders- of dialogue”. Vandelli talked about dialogue between institutions, both at an international scale and among territorial autonomies within the State.

“Like we saw, dialogue between public powers and citizens, European and global dialogue, dialogue between central powers and autonomies, all these ways of dialogue are set in the fundamental principles of our constitutional bills, our laws, our orders”, concluded Vandelli, and then asked whether the presence of this dialogue in legislation “has taken roots in the spirit of the peoples, in the spirit of our time”. “Certainly, dialogue finds principles, modalities, and tools in the rules. Also, translating these principle, modalities and tools into a specific reality within the functioning of our systems is seen, from several profiles, as an objective. An objective that requires everyoneʼs commitment, institutionsʼ and citizensʼ, so that dialogue transforms the functioning of our institutions, so that the relations between institutions and society change for real”, concluded the jurist.

The rector, Joan Elias, gave a speech which revolved around Europe. He stated that Europe “has been the core of the academic and innovative activity” for Ferrajoli and Vadelli. In these lines, he noted that the universities have to “contribute responsibly to the development of Europe, with an integrating, open and inclusive view: knowledge has no geographical or political limits”. He went for a “global society” and mentioned two projects of the UB that respond to this aim: its participation in the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the creation of Charm EU, the project of a European university together with Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), Trinity College Dublin, Utrecht University and the University of Montpellier.

The extraordinary awards for the 2016/2017 masters' degrees were given during the ceremony.

LUIGI FERRAJOLI (Florence, 1940) has contributed significantly to the reformulation of the study of Lwa, with the recognition of human rights as a fundamental pillar of a theory of democracy. Professor at the University Roma Tre, he focused his work on the relation between democracy and law, and between law and reason. Ferrajoli proposes -over his work- a democratic transformation, and with this objective he reaches aspects of philosophy of law, but also of a strong constitutionalism from which certain social and legal policies derive. This is completed with his approach to a criminology with sociological roots, not subject to legal sciences. Before the investiture, on January 30 and 31, the Faculty of Law will hold an international session paying homage to Ferrajoli, which will treat topics such as the practice of torture by security forces or public freedom and “guarantism”.

LUCIANO VANDELLI (Bologna, 1946), professor at the University of Bologna, carried out an extense and deep legal analysis of the public, constitutional and administrative institutional system in Southern Europe countries with Napoleonic tradition. He was the first author to publish a complete study on the autonomic system established by the Spanish constitution in 1978. His contributions enabled understanding the deep reasons of the current territorial, autonomic and local configuration of the countries in Southern Europe, as well as the possibilities and strategies for its reform based on the tight relationship between autonomy and democracy. It has been a fundamental bridge between Spanish and Italian jurists. In particular, he maintained strong ties with the University of Barcelona, including Conferences and academic sessions together and the promotion of the first agreement to launch the Erasmus program between the faculties of Law of the UB and the University of Bologna, after which the collaboration spread to other faculties and Universities. In fact, this collaboration crystallized in the honorary doctorate investiture to Fabio Roversi Monaco in 1989 by the UB, who was then the rector of the University of Bologna Vandelliʼs lecturer.