Court of Assizes

The article describes the sources and the reading approaches adopted in analysing them. The purpose of this analysis was to identify the interpretative action of the investigating judge in the examined investigation files; i.e., those related to criminal trials conducted before the Venice Court of Assizes in the first years of the legislative integration of the Veneto region with the Kingdom of Italy (1871–1876). The term interpretation, in this context, refers on the one hand to the decoding of the socio-cultural substrate to which the people involved in the criminal trial belonged, and on the other hand, to the action of transcribing – translating into written form a dialectal or vernacular language variant. More specifically, we have examined several acts (the questioning of the defendants, the examinations of the witnesses and victims, the summarizing abstract of the investigation) that have allowed us, more evidentially, to reconstruct the traces of such an interpretative action.

L'intervento descrive le fonti e gli approcci di lettura adottati per l'analisi delle stesse allo scopo di individuare l'azione interpretativa del giudice istruttore nei fascicoli istruttori esaminati, ovvero quelli relativi ai procedimenti penali dibattuti avanti la Corte d'assise veneziana nei primi anni di unificazione legislativa del Veneto al Regno d'Italia (1871–1876). Per interpretazione, in questo contesto, si intende da una parte la decodificazione del sostrato socio-culturale al quale appartenevano le persone investite dal processo penale; dall'altra l'operazione di trascrizione, vale a dire di traduzione in forma scritta di un linguaggio dialettale e popolare. Nello specifico, si sono esaminati alcuni atti (gli interrogatori degli imputati, gli esami dei testimoni e delle vittime, il compendio riassuntivo delle indagini) che con più evidenza hanno permesso di ricostruire le tracce di tale operazione interpretativa.

This book is the result of a lecture at the University of Naples held in 2008. It deals with the fundamental role of judicial publicity and public opinion (judicial public sphere) in the change of justice in 19th and 20th Centuries. It follows the conceptual space of the Gospel exhortations “Do not judge!” in their different interpretations (André Gide) and analyses the main issues of modern justice also according to an  anthropological approach

This book (now in German translation) is the result of a lecture at the University of Naples held in 2008. It deals with the fundamental role of judicial publicity and public opinion (judicial public sphere) in the change of justice in 19th and 20th Centuries. It follows the conceptual space of the Gospel exhortations “Do not judge!” in their different interpretations (André Gide) and analyses the main issues of modern justice also according to an  anthropological approach

This book (now in Spanish translation) is the result of a lecture at the University of Naples held in 2008. It deals with the fundamental role of judicial publicity and public opinion (judicial public sphere) in the change of justice in 19th and 20th Centuries. It follows the conceptual space of the Gospel exhortations “Do not judge!” in their different interpretations (André Gide) and analyses the main issues of modern justice also according to an  anthropological approach