This book explores how the design, construction, and use of robotics technology may affect today's legal systems and, more particularly, matters of responsibility and agency in criminal law, contractual obligations, and torts. By distinguishing between the behaviour of robots as tools of human interaction, and robots as proper agents in the legal arena, jurists will have to address a new generation of "hard cases." General disagreement may concern immunity in criminal law (e.g., the employment of robot soldiers in battle), personal (...) accountability for certain robots in contracts (e.g., robo-traders), much as clauses of strict liability and negligence-based responsibility in extra-contractual obligations (e.g., service robots in tort law). Since robots are here to stay, the aim of the law should be to wisely govern our mutual relationships. (shrink)

I manoscritti dell'abate Galiani.--Catalogo sistematico dei manoscritti dell'abate Galiani.--Intorno al terzo dei Libri della Biccherna.--Due recensioni.--Groce, B. I manoscritti dell'abate Galiani.--Nicolini, B. Profilo di Fausto Nicolini archivista.

These proceedings collect the selected contributions of participants of the First Karl Schwarzschild Meeting on Gravitational Physics, held in Frankfurt, Germany to celebrate the 140th anniversary of Schwarzschild's birth. They are grouped into 4 main themes: I. The Life and Work of Karl Schwarzschild; II. Black Holes in Classical General Relativity, Numerical Relativity, Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Alternative Theories of Gravity; III. Black Holes in Quantum Gravity and String Theory; IV. Other Topics in Contemporary Gravitation. Inspired by the foundational principle ``By (...) acknowledging the past, we open a route to the future", the week-long meeting, envisioned as a forum for exchange between scientists from all locations and levels of education, drew participants from 15 countries across 4 continents. In addition to plenary talks from leading researchers, a special focus on young talent was provided, a feature underlined by the Springer Prize for the best student and junior presentations. (shrink)

In order to present a hopefully comprehensive framework of what is the stake of the growing use of robot soldiers, the paper focuses on: the different impact of robots on legal systems, e.g., contractual obligations and tort liability; how robots affect crucial notions as causality, predictability and human culpability in criminal law and, finally, specific hypotheses of robots employed in “just wars.” By using the traditional distinction between causes that make wars just and conduct admissible on the battlefield, the aim (...) is to clarify how advancement of military robotics technology is transforming a 2,000-year-old legal debate on the concept of “just war.” For the first time, legal systems will hold political authorities and military commissioners responsible for what an artificial soldier autonomously decides to do. The paper examines how the new scenario affects both principles of military conduct and notions of justice in resorting to war. (shrink)

The paper examines today’s debate on the new responsibilities of Internet service providers in connection with legal problems concerning jurisdiction, data processing, people’s privacy and education. The focus is foremost on the default rules and safe harbour clauses for ISPs liability, set up by the US and European legal systems. This framework is deepened in light of the different functions of the services provided on the Internet so as to highlight multiple levels of control over information and, correspondingly, different types (...) of liability. The new responsibilities of ISPs concern the original “end-to-end” architecture of the medium and policies on design rather than responsibility for user content and individual messages. (shrink)

Questo primo volume degli "Scritti di Ugo Bianchi" - "Religions in Antiquity" - raccoglie contributi relativi a temi e problemi del cristianesimo antico. Con esso si realizza un progetto, formulato in anni lontani (1983) dallo stesso autore, che contemplava varie sezioni di cui l'ultima - "Christiana" comprendeva i saggi che costituiscono la prima metà del volume; a questi ne sono stati aggiunti altri, sulle medesime tematiche, che risalgono ad anni successivi. Precede i saggi un contributo di carattere metodologico ("Tipologia storica (...) delle religioni e comparazione: il caso del dualismo"). "Ugo Bianchi, nel suo lungo itinerario scientifico che abbraccia alcune delle più significative aree del vasto panorama delle esperienze religiose della storia umana, non ha mai proposto una "teoria" interpretativa generale e onnicomprensiva di esse, quale molto spesso - con esiti e fortune diversi hanno fatto tanti storici delle religioni. Egli, al contrario, ha mostrato riserbo o vera e propria diffidenza nei confronti di tali "teorie" che il progresso della ricerca e la riflessione critica hanno sempre in varia misura smentito o ridimensionato. Di fatto, lo studioso ha costantemente riconosciuto la debolezza intrinseca di tali tentativi alla luce delle mobili e differenziate realtà che la storia ci consegna e che solo a prezzo di un'analisi comparativa condotta con duttilità e rigore..." (dall'Introduzione Giulia Sfameni Gasparro). (shrink)

The contribution describes the legal phenomenon as a playing field characterized by a progressive regression of the law, understood as a sovereign will from top to bottom, both in the vision of formalist legal positivisms in continental Europe and in realist terms, in the United States. Soft law represents the main strategy to subordinate the law to the interests of the economy, elasticizing environmental law, making it favorable to the market, reducing ecology to the simplistic metric of CO2 emissions. The (...) consequence is a retreat of the statist vertical normativity of law which is not replaced by a de facto power granted to those who control the technology, built by design to close spaces for pluralism and democratic action, in the interest of surveillance and concentrated power in private and government oligopolies. The author concludes by advocating the urgency for genuinely innovative categories, particularly in the legal education, such as the commons, capable of including sustainability into a “new ecological jurisprudence committed to inclusion and solidarity rather than exclusion and struggle”. (shrink)

The Cyrenaic school of philosophy (named after its founder Aristippus’ native city of Cyrene in North Africa) flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Ugo Zilioli’s book provides the first book-length introduction to the school in English. The book begins by introducing the main figures of the Cyrenaic school beginning with Aristippus and by setting them into their historical context. Once the reader is familiar with those figures and with the genealogy of the school, the book offers an overview (...) of ancient and modern interpretations of the Cyrenaics, to provide readers with alternative accounts of the doctrines they endorsed and of the role they played in the context of ancient thought. Finally, the book offers a reconstruction of Cyrenaic philosophy and shows how the ethical side of their speculation connected with the epistemology and ontology they endorsed and that, as a result, the Cyrenaics were able to offer a quite sophisticated philosophy. Indeed, Zilioli demonstrates that they represented, in ancient philosophy, an important and original metaphysical position and alternative to the kind of realism endorsed by Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

The nature of matter and the idea of indivisible parts has fascinated philosophers, historians, scientists and physicists from antiquity to the present day. This collection covers the richness of its history, starting with how the Ancient Greeks came to assume the existence of atoms and concluding with contemporary metaphysical debates about structure, time and reality. Focusing on important moments in the history of human thought when the debate about atomism was particularly flourishing and transformative for the scientific and philosophical spirit (...) of the time, this collection covers: - The discovery of atomism in ancient philosophy - Ancient non-Western, Arabic and late Medieval thought - The Renaissance, when along with the re-discovery of ancient thought, atomism became once again an important doctrine to be fully debated - Logical atomism in early analytic philosophy, with Russell and Wittgenstein - Atomism in Liberalism and Marxism - Atomism and the philosophy of time - Atomism in contemporary metaphysics - Atomism and the sciences Featuring 28 chapters by leading and younger scholars, this valuable collection reveals the development of one of philosophy's central doctrines across 2,500 years and within a broad range of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Sono certo sarebbe stato più prudente iniziare e concludere questa mia lectio prestando fede – e mettendo in pratica – quanto scrive Ludwig Wittgenstein nel 1932 in Pensieri diversi, quando dice: «In arte è difficile dire qualcosa che sia altrettanto buono del non dire niente». Ma tant’è: nelle cose del mondo, quando non si può negare una certa vanità, ci si inerpica spesso per sentieri difficili e impervi. M’incammino quindi, con qualche titubanza, nel tentativo di indicare il mio modo di (...) e... (shrink)

The paper focuses on concerns and legal challenges brought on by the use of algorithms. A particular class of algorithms that augment or replace analysis and decision-making by humans, i.e. data analytics and machine learning, is under scrutiny. Taking into account Balkin’s work on “the laws of an algorithmic society”, attention is drawn to obligations of transparency, matters of due process, and accountability. This US-centric analysis on drawbacks and loopholes of current legal systems is complemented with the analysis of norms (...) and principles of the EU data protection law, or “GDPR”. The aim is twofold. On the one hand, the intent is to shed light on some crucial differences between the US and EU law on the regulation of algorithmic operators, both public and private. Whereas, in the USA, scholars debate whether and to what extent new duties and responsibilities of algorithmic operators, e.g. information fiduciaries, have to amend the current framework of self-regulation and light government—as shown by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy report from November 2016—in EU law much of the new duties and responsibilities of algorithmic operators have been passed upon them as data controllers. Whether such approaches will successfully tackle the normative challenges of the algorithmic society is, on the other hand, an open issue that will likely represent the main topic of debate over the next years. Disagreement may concern: the terms framing the legal question in e.g. statistical purposes of the data processing; how such terms are related to each other in legal reasoning ; and legal hard cases that will increasingly have to do with the principles that are at stake also but not only in data protection. By entrusting such legal hard cases to algorithms, or some sort of smart artificial agent, humans still bear full responsibility for the judgment of what is socially, ethically, and legally “plain” and “hard” in social affairs. The balance between delegation of decisions to algorithms and non-delegation will be the leitmotiv of the algorithmic society. Since the devil is in the detail, the current paper is devoted to some of them. (shrink)