In praise of Mauro Cappelletti

Abstract

This article examines the legacy of Mauro Cappelletti, the great Italian legal polymath who was internationally renowned for his vital contributions to numerous diverse legal fields. The author, who was personally acquainted with Cappelletti, first gives an overview of the celebrated jurist's life. He then proceeds to discuss Cappelletti's work, which-permeated as it was with a strongly "outward-looking" perspective, a sense of legal systems as members of a larger and "communicating world"-was all the more groundbreaking in light of the highly dogmatic approach predominant in the study and practice of law in his times, according to which the law was largely "self-contained" in both scientific and national terms. The author then considers Cappelletti's heritage today, detailing his remarkable prescience in preferring a "contextual," universalistic methodology, emphasizing the law's tendencies toward and aptitude for convergence, registering the rise in constitutionalization, internationalization, socialization, and judicialization, and promoting equality as a crucial element of justice.