Closing Date: 23 September 2005

The University of Trento announces the 21st cycle of the GraduateSchool in Comparative and European Legal Studies in co-operation with:
- Juristisches Seminar Universität Greifswald (Germany)
- Departemento de Derecho publico Universidad di Castellón de la Plana (Spain)
- Universidad Pompeu-Fabra Barcelona (Spain)
- Universidad de Salamanca - Facultad de Derecho (Spain)
- Faculty of Law, Maastricht University (Netherlands)
- University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (USA)
- École Normale Supériore Lyon (France)
- Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht - Friburgo (Germany).

Length: three years

Specialized curricula:
    Private Law and Comparative Private Law
    Substantive and Procedural Labour Law
    Criminal Law and Procedure
    Public Jurisprudence
    History of Law and Juridical Thought in Europe

Scientific - disciplinary areas:    IUS / 01    Private Law
IUS / 02    Comparative Private Law
IUS / 07    Labour Law
IUS / 09    Institutions of Public Law
IUS / 10    Administrative Law
IUS / 15    Civil Procedural Law
IUS / 16    Criminal Procedural Law
IUS / 17    Criminal Law
IUS / 19    History of Medieval and Modern Law
IUS / 21    Comparative Public Law
SPS / 02    History of Political Doctrines

Co-ordinator: prof. Gabriele Fornasari - Tel. 0461 883886 - E-mail: fornasari@jus.unitn.it

Official languages: Italian and English

This hereby announces the selection process for 16 PhD positions in thePhD Programme. 8 positions will be assigned grants financed by theUniversity of Trento (Italy).
The number of grant-assisted places may be increased by funds fromuniversities, public research bodies or qualified private organizationsmade available after the publication of this announcement and beforethe beginning of the selection. Any increase in the number of availableplaces resulting from an increase of grants will be communicatedthrough the official notice board of the University of Trento, andposted on the website:http://www.unitn.it/ricerca/dottorati_form_av/ciclo_21/bandi.htm

ART. 2 -ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Applications for PhD positions are accepted from candidates, regardlessof sex, age and nationality, holding a "laurea specialistica italiana"(master's degree), according to Ministerial Decree no. 509 of3.11.1999, a university degree compliant with the terms of the previousregulations in effect, or an equivalent degree qualification obtainedabroad.
Applicants who have a foreign qualification that has not beenofficially recognized as equivalent to an Italian degree should submita request for equivalence to be recognized in their application for theselection.
In this case, the following documents must be attached to the application:
-    degree certificate or degree self-certification(according to Presidential Decree no. 445 of 28.12.2000 concerning EUcitizens);
-    translation into English of the degree certificatewith exams and grades obtained and furthermore signed by the applicantto enable the Graduate School Committee to declare its equivalence, forthe sole purpose of being admitted to the selection of the PhDProgramme.
After their admission to the School, successful non EU applicants whohold a foreign qualification must present the degree certificate withexams and grades obtained, translated and certified by the ItalianEmbassy in the country of the university that issued the degree, andthe declaration of equivalent value ("Dichiarazione di valore") nolater than the date set for enrolment in the Graduate School.
Applications are also invited from students who expect to completetheir degree by the date of the first selection examination. In suchcases, admission will be "conditional" and the applicant must be ableto present the relevant degree certificate, or a declaration that thedegree has been conferred (according to Presidential Decree no. 445 of28.12.2000, applicable only to citizens of the European Union), by thedate of the first examination.

ART. 3 - THE PhD PROGRAMME
The first-year curriculum is common to all specialised pathways. It isbased on a series of scientific seminars on interdisciplinary issues,divided into four modules ("The economic analysis of law"; "Theformation of European jurisprudence"; "The functions and methods ofjurisprudential comparison"; and "The protection of fundamentalrights"), for a total 120 hours of lecture time.
The following topics will be dealt with in detail:
- the formation of the sources of European law;
- the history of the concept of justice;
- the development of European jurisprudence;
- the concept of the propagation of juridical models;
- the comparison between systems of common law and civil law;
- the economic analysis of law;
- institutes of Islamic law;
- methods and goals of research in comparative jurisprudence;
- resisting and innovative factors in globalisation;
- the regime and evolution of fundamental rights;
- the transformation of constitutional law in the comparative perspective;
- processes of integration between judiciary codes;
- the institution of international criminal courts;
- the relationship between criminal studies and social sciences;
- alternatives to conflict resolution.
Lectures will be held in part by professors from the Graduate SchoolCommittee and the Department of Legal Sciences at the University ofTrento, and in part by internationally acknowledged Italian andinternational professors.
Some of the lectures will be given in English.

All students will spend a total of 6 months (not necessarilyconsecutive) studying abroad in institutions that have expressed theirwillingness to host them.
Students will be encouraged to do an internship or to attend externalcourses as part of young researchers exchange programmes at prominentforeign universities, where members of the Graduate School Committeelecture either on a permanent basis or as visiting professors.

Curricula for the following years (organised by specialised subject)

Private Law and Comparative Private Law
The topics handled during the second and third years of the PhD course are as follows:
- understanding models - macro-comparison and diachronic comparison;
- the comparison of institutes - micro-comparison and synchronic comparison.
The following course module topics will be explored in detail:
- Comparative legal systems - Property, contract issues and liabilities in civil law and common law;
- The formation of a common European private law;
- The propagation of models in European private law - The propagation of models of civil law and common law;
- The law of economics - The propagation of models and economic analysis.
Already by its 19th and 20th cycles, the Economic Analysis of Lawcourse held by the Graduate School of Comparative and European LegalStudies had established close collaborative ties with the Department ofEconomics for the realisation of a number of initiatives for PhDstudents. Of particular interest, and an initiative that the Schoolintends to repeat, was the round table on "The theory and practice ofregulation", involving the participation of Prof. Lorenzo Sacconi. Inthis cycle too, the students will be able to participate in otherinitiatives organised by the Department of Economics, such as theSummer Institute in Behavioural Economics, and other seminars on topicsof research common to both the Department of Legal Sciences and theDepartment of Economics. There are also plans for a series of lecturesin the Economic Analysis of Law, conducted together with the GraduateSchool of Economics and Management.
Substantive and Procedural Labour Law
The topics handled during the second and third years of the course willstudy aspects of labour law in detail and, in particular, discipline inindividual and collective labour relations in a European andtrans-national context, and basic profiles of labour procedures andarbitration.
This part of the course will closely assess, through interdisciplinarystudies, discipline in labour relations (subordinate, para-subordinateand autonomous) and the forms and methods of protection for workers(judicial and extra-judicial), in a broad sense and in a national andtrans-national context.
As the study of these topics enters the realms of a system in which amultitude of national, international and EU sources of law interact, inorder to optimise the use of comparative methods, the curriculum hasbeen structured into two levels: the first level studies the generalprinciples of the protection of fundamental individual rights and thecharacterising principles of fair trial; the second level studies morespecific topics, which are closely related to substantial andprocedural labour law and the protection of workers. While these aretwo different focal points, they both play a part in the same unitaryperspective, both on a national and comparative law scale and aninternational and supra-national scale.
In this light, particular focus must be given to issues related to theincreasingly forceful drive towards legislative harmonisation due,undoubtedly, to the strengthening of the European Union - with effectsnotable on a trans-national scale - that substantially weakens the roleof national sovereignty which is at the core of all traditional socialsecurity systems.
As a result, in addition to generalised problems concerning theprotection of rights and fundamental individual liberties, thecurriculum will also deal with the following major topics:
• the relation between supra-national law - with particular regard for European Union and ILO law - and national law;
• the harmonisation or "communitisation" of disciplines in different areas, with particular reference to:
- Freedom of movement for workers.
- The rights of EU citizen workers and non-EU citizen workers.
- The protection of gender equality and positive action.
- The protection of confidentiality and new technologies.
- The promotion of employment and professional training.
- Work safety and the working environment.
- Types of labour relationships: subordinated, para-subordinated and autonomous.
- The promotion of instruments for flexibility in entering and leaving the job market.
- Creditor's powers and the rights of the worker.
- Instruments and methods for protection: self-protection and judicial protection: civil, criminal and administrative.
- Alternative protection measures to judicial action: conciliation and arbitration.
- The role of collective interest organisations in a national, EU and international context.
- Trans-national and European collective contract negotiation.
The PhD students will also be encouraged to participate in cultural andresearch initiatives organised by the Italian Association of Labour Lawand Social Security Law (AIDLASS) and in initiatives promoted by theItalian Association of researchers into civil procedure.

Criminal Law and Procedure
In part, the research topics proposed will analyse the subjects alreadyhandled by previous cycles of the Criminal Law curriculum:
a) the harmonisation of criminal law and criminal procedural law in a European and trans-national context;
b) criminal law of economics and new technologies;
c) alternative means to resolve conflicts of a criminal nature:substantive and procedural issues of mediation in dealings with minorsand the criminal jurisdiction of the justice of the peace.
Other parts of the curriculum provide more detail, with morespecialised aspects related to the following particularly relevantissues:
1. The relations between the criminal justice systems (in bothsubstantive and procedural aspects) and supra-national law, withspecific regard for:
a) Community law and European Union law, particularly in view of thenew European Constitution. The increasing drive towards theharmonisation of judiciary codes, including criminal codes, of theMember States, and in particular, the instruments of the Third Pillar(framework conventions and decisions on issues such as the fightagainst fraud, terrorism, organised crime, money laundering, thetrafficking of human beings, environmental protection, etc.) offer newand wider scope for research, in view of the imminent approval of theEuropean Constitution which ratifies the jurisdiction of the EuropeanUnion in criminal matters and of effective Europe-wide projects for theunification of criminal law and criminal procedural law in individualareas (the Corpus Juris project for the criminal protection of EUfinancial interests and for the establishment of a European PublicProsecutor; the European arrest warrant; Eurojust etc.);
b) Criminal law, criminal procedure and international tools for theprotection of fundamental rights, specifically the European Conventionon Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justicein Strasbourg. The development and increasing influence of Europeanjurisprudence in national criminal legal systems, in large partassimilated by the European Court of Justice, make it relevant toassess the effective role that fundamental rights play as "subjects"and "limits" in modern criminal law, and what powers they exert in theprocedure;
c) International criminal law and procedure, particularly in light ofthe Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and thejurisprudence of ad hoc Tribunals for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. Theentry in effect of the International Criminal Court, the prolificproduction of relative doctrine and the significant extension of thejurisprudence of ad hoc Tribunals have allowed for a wide spectrum ofresearch into the general aspect and general theories of crime in thenew international criminal law (assumptions for individual and jointresponsibility, the subjective factor and error, extenuatingcircumstances, commensurate sentencing, etc.), into individualinstances of crime encountered (genocide, war crimes, crimes againsthumanity, crimes of aggression), and into the basic categories in thenascent international criminal procedure (action; role of theprosecution; investigation techniques and international cooperation;the formation of evidence; final judgement and the so-calledinternational ne bis in idem).
2. The criminal law of new technologies, with particular regard forcriminal law for IT and the Internet (computercrime and cybercrime),genetics, assisted fertility techniques, end of life health treatmentetc. and related procedural profiles. The extraordinary development ofIT and the Internet, combined with today's new needs for discipline andharmonisation in all judiciary codes, which are monitored by severalsupra-national bodies (UN, the European Council, specifically with the2001 Convention on Cybercrime, the European Union, WIPO, etc.), isopening up new, extensive fields of research, in a trans-national andcomparative context, in many areas: from the criminal protection ofconfidentiality and copyright, the fight against fraud, counterfeiting,damages, illegal access and interception, the distribution ofpornography and offensive content, etc. to the allocation ofresponsibility to service-providers and professionals, specificallybusiness and organisation owners, etc. with the establishment andexperimentation of new juridical institutes, also on procedural andprobational levels, and forms of international cooperation.
3. Non-penitentiary punishments and alternative means for criminalconflict resolution, with particular regard for the criminaljurisdiction system of justices of the peace and the juvenile courts.The general and universally acknowledged crisis in the use of detentionas a normal means to control deviance and resolve conflicts of alargely interpersonal nature (excluding serious forms of crime orviolence towards assets of particular importance to the collective orthe individual) has prompted research (not merely theoretical research,but also including the experimentation of legislative and applicativepractices in many foreign judiciary codes) into non-penitentiarypunishments and alternative means to resolve conflicts in a criminalcontext. In particular, the curriculum studies subjects of researchsuch as institutes for restorative justice, (criminal) mediationbetween perpetrator and victim, the promotion of reparatory andrecompensatory conducts and their favourable effects on criminalprocedure, opportunities for voluntary discontinuance of or withdrawalfrom legal action due to the tenuous or irrelevant nature of the fact,when it is unnecessary or inappropriate to proceed with or conclude atrial; etc. These institutes, first introduced in our judiciary codewithin the area of juvenile criminal justice (in particular, throughthe "alternative definitions" of the procedure introduced byPresidential Decree no. 448 of 22.9.1988), have recently been extendedto apply to adult criminal justice, through legislation introducing thecriminal jurisdiction of the Justice of the Peace (Law Decree no. 274of 28.8.2000, implementing the Delegation Law no. 468 of 24.11.1999).In this matter, there has been much debate regarding doctrine, and thefirst significant facts on judiciary practice are now emerging.

Public Jurisprudence
The topics handled during the second and third years of the course willstudy aspects of jurisprudence in detail and, in particular, theprotection of fundamental rights.
During this part of the course, the specialised curriculum willmaintain a unitary structure, albeit spread over several disciplinaryfocal points, which are all interrelated in a perspective of bothnational and comparative law, and of international and Community law,due to the similarities in the substantial and procedural foundationsof the protection of fundamental rights.
Specifically, the curriculum will handle the following topics:
- Fundamental rights: philosophical origins and constitutional codification.
- Fundamental rights: foundations, regime, structure and content.
- The rights of EU citizens.
- The rights of non-EU citizens.
- The international instruments of protection: universal instruments(UN) and regional instruments (the Council of Europe, OAU and OAS).
- International and supra-national procedural instruments:international judges and Community judges; relations with nationaljurisdictions.
- Sector-specific instruments of protection: freedom of thought(freedom of information, freedom of communication, rights of access toadministrative documentation, the protection of health information, theprotection of statistical data and the system of derogation);participation in the administrative process; the charter of services(the user's position in relation with the providers of publicservices); the instruments of implementation of the principle ofhorizontal subsidiarity.
- The rights of minorities (ethnic and linguistic): instruments for individual and collective protection.
- Fundamental rights in relation to new technologies (BioLaw).
- Instruments of protection: a) constitutional justice; b) administrative justice and c) ordinary jurisdiction.
- Instruments of protection: final protection and precautionary protection.

The History of Law and Juridical Thought in Europe
The topics handled in the second and third years of the course willdeal with a wide panorama of historical-legal studies, from the laws ofantiquity and Romanist traditions to common law and complete modernity,with special focus on the jurisprudential and doctrinal aspects of law.The historical-juridical curriculum is not intended to play aninceptive role but, rather, to highlight the intrinsic historicaldimension of jurisprudence and, in particular, legal-doctrinaldevelopments in the long history of the ius commune Europaeum.
The contribution of historical disciplines in the PhD course will,therefore, on the one hand deal with the dissemination of themethodological and conceptual legacies contained in the European legaltradition and, on the other, with the understanding of specific issuesin the history of law, identified by the topics of research of each PhDstudent.
The specific topics of research which will be conducted during the twoyears following the first, common year will cover matters relative tothe production of doctrine in public law, the procedure, therelationship between forms of literature and theoretical development(consultant and commentary literature) and the comparison of laws intheir historical context.
Overall, the curriculum will promote a concept of multidimensionality in law and its concrete manifestations.

ART. 4 - APPLICATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SELECTION
Application should be made using the application form attached to this announcement.
The application, including a photocopy of the candidate's identity cardor passport, must reach the University of Trento by the 23rd ofSeptember 2005 by one of the following means:
-    delivered in person to the University of Trento-  Ufficio Dottorati di Ricerca, Via Inama 5 - 38100 Trento (TN),from 10:00 am to 12:00 a.m., Monday to Friday;
-    by post to the following address: Magnifico Rettoredell'Università degli Studi di Trento - via Belenzani 12 - 38100 Trento(TN), ITALY (please write "PhD Programme in Comparative and EuropeanLegal Studies" on the envelope);
-    by fax to the following number: 0039 0461 882191.
The applicant should ensure that the address given for correspondenceand the telephone number are correct, and that any changes are reportedas soon as possible to the University of Trento - Ufficio Dottorati diRicerca. The University of Trento declines all responsibility for postoffice mishandling.
Applications arriving after the 23rd of September 2005 will not be considered, even if sent before this date.

According to Italian Law no. 104/92, art. 20, and to Italian Law no.68/99, art. 16, para. 1, applicants with special needs are required toexplicitly indicate, in their application, whether they require specialassistance or extra time during the examinations. Under LegislativeDecree 196/03, all information will be handled confidentially.

Applications should include:
-    a photocopy of the applicant's identity card or passport;
-    curriculum vitae;
-    any certificates proving the applicant's knowledge of the English language.

Applicants with a foreign qualification that has not been officiallyrecognized as equivalent to the Italian degree are required to attach atranslation in English of the degree certificate, with exams and scoresobtained, signed under their own responsibility, so as to allow theGraduate School Committee to declare the equivalence. This is valid forthe sole purpose of participating in the selection.
If, pursuant to submission of their application, applicants wish to addfurther information, it must reach the University offices by the 23rdof September 2005. The applicant's name, the Graduate School he or sheis applying for and the subject ("integrazione domanda") must beclearly written on the envelope.
The University of Trento reserves the right to verify (including spotchecking), declarations and documents submitted by candidates,according to art. 71 and subsequent articles of Presidential Decree no.445, dated 28.12.2000.
At any time, candidates failing to meet the requisites specified, maybe omitted from the selection process for the Graduate School Committee.

Closing Date: 23 September 2005

For more information and application form, see the source of this document.

[Contributor: Lianita Prawindarti]