Criminal Law Course

As always, this edition of the present Course was born not only to cope with the exhaustion of the previous one but also from a need for updating. However, also due to the short period of time between one edition and the other, the update was this time objectively less urgent and more contained: not because the legislator has recovered from its penal bulimia but rather because, in the face of a plethora of new incriminating norms (mostly useless) churned out after the change of political majority, the innovations directly affecting the institutions of the "general part" have been very few (and, maliciously, someone could say: fortunately!). On the contrary, the jurisprudential production has always been very relevant, both that of the ordinary judges and that of the Constitutional Court, and naturally, although perhaps less disruptive in the very last period, that of the European Courts. We have tried to give an account of the jurisprudential component, which is increasingly significant also in our branch of law, to the greatest extent possible, without however altering the original characteristics of the Course. Indeed, there are today valuable works of a more or less markedly manualistic nature, programmatically and entirely based on jurisprudence. Meritorious and highly appreciable works. But our Course, while it must not ignore the role of jurisprudential law, cannot however renounce its original character as a critical interlocutor of jurisprudence, in the legitimate claim – typical of the academy – to contribute, especially with the education of young people, to the complex and overall evolution of law, dialoguing in constructive autonomy with all its trainees.