AG Lectures

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The «Alberico Gentili Lectures» (AGL) is an annual appointment, held between March and April, involving distinguished academics, judges and leaders from all over the world delivering three unprecedented lectures about law in the broadest sense.

The lectures are entitled to Alberico Gentili, a protestant dissident who, in the late Sixteenth century, escaped from Macerata and from the religious persecution he had been suffering with his family and ended up holding a chair at Oxford as one of the first European scholars in public international law. His experience as a refugee because of his religious diversity inspired this series of lectures in such a way that both guests involved in the AGL and the topics they deal with aim at emphasizing the propelling value of «being different» for the development of a career and for a human experience. This is why, between the lectures, guests make themselves available for a conversation-interview about their life and career, discussing when and why they felt «different» and how this affected their human and professional journey.

Students are strongly advised to take part in these lectures: they may join the faculty in organizing and promoting the event and, later, in editing the books that the Italian publishing house il Mulino draws every year from the lectures (for further information about the AGL, please contact professor Benedetta Barbisan, b.barbisan@unimc.it).

AGL Lectures

AGL Book Series

Alberico Gentili Lectures

AGL 2023 - Populist challenge to Democracy (November, 14,15,16)

Keynote Speaker: Péter Paczolay, judge of the European Court of Human Rights

AGL 2022 - Populist challenge to Democracy (November, 15,16,17)

Keynote Speaker: Wojciech Sadurski, Challis Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney and a Professor of the University of Warsaw, Centre for Europe

AGL 2021- Corti a confronto (October, 27 - 28)

Keynote Speaker: Silvana Sciarra, Judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy

Alberico Genitli Lectures 2017 - (May, 3-4)

Keynote Speaker: Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice

AGL’s guest is Sonia Sotmayor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, whose life epitomises how determination, confidence and commitment can overcome serious difficulties in life and make one’s own dreams true. On this occasion, the AGL present themselves significantly renovated: in fact, alongside Justice Sotomayor’s lectio magistralis and the presentation of the Italian version of her autobiography, My Beloved World, published in the AGL book series, the University of Macerata and the Queen’s University Belfast inaugurate a series of annual seminars, entitled Comparing Constitutional Justice (CCJ) with the aim of bringing together justices and scholars from a diversity of jurisdictions to discuss and compare different experiences, cultures, and contexts in the field of constitutional justice. Our two institutions have jointly conceived and nurtured this initiative, with the aspiration of establishing a continuing forum for dialogue among justices. The remarks delivered at every seminar will then form the basis of edited volumes, to be published by Cambridge University Press or Oxford University Press, in order to ensure that the discussion initiated in Macerata and Belfast reaches a wider audience.

AGL 2015 - Litigating Religions. Human Rights, Faith, and Pluralism

(April, 21-23)

Keynote Speaker: Christopher McCrudden, former Oxford University; Queen's University (Belfast); Michigan Law School (USA); Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlino).

AGL 2014 - Come lavora la Corte costituzionale e come interagisce con le Corti europee

(April 29-20)

Keynote Speaker: Giuliano Amato, former Italian Prime MInister and Vice-President of the European Convention.

AGL 2013 - Social Order & Disordered Minds

(April 22-24)

Keynote Speaker: Robert A. Burt, Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

He worked at the White House in the Kennedy Administration and was involved in the drafting of some landmarked, historical pieces of legislation, including the 1968 Civil Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of Martin Luther King, jr. He delivered three lectures about «Social Order & Disordered Minds» and accepted to speak with the audience about the time when he was admitted as a student at Princeton, later at Oxford and, then, at Yale - a time when jews like him could be only a very small and segregated minority, even inside the largest and most prestigious universities.

AGL 2012 - Being a Judge. Thoughts of an American Scholar

(April)

Keynote Speaker: Guido Calabresi, former dean of the Yale Law School, Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit in New York and one of the founders, along with Nobel-prize winner Ronald Coase, of law and economics.

His three lectures were entitled: «Being a Judge. Thoughts of an American Scholar». Calabresi left Italy at six, escaping from fascism in the United States: when arrived in New York, he was immediately put through school without speaking a word of English. His status as a refugee was the major influence of his career as a teacher, as a judge, and as a man.