CIVIL PROCEDURE
Instructional goals
The course aims to complete the student's training in civil procedure, with a view to his professional insertion, taking into account the importance of the subject in many of the job opportunities offered by the master's degree course.
Intended learning outcomes
Knowledge and understanding: The student - through the lectures and practical activities of the course attendace - will have acquired analytical knowledge of the models of the processes through which the judicial protection of rights is carried out (cognition and execution processes, special procedures) and will be able to understand its critical or problematic implications. These skills will be monitored during the course through intermediate tests (guided self-assessment tests) and verified during the final, oral test.
Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: The student will learn to connect the notions acquired during the course and use them in solving the questions involving the interpretation and application of procedural rules. Furthermore, also through the carrying out of practical cases, s/he will acquire the ability to discuss the techniques for carrying out the process situations, starting from the principles and concepts expressed in the first Book of the code.
Autonomy of judgment: The student will be able to independently deal with the problems relating to procedural rules, to adequately motivate the proposed solutions or critically analyse the the doctrine’s and jurisprudence’s solutions, in order to assess their practicability.
Communication skills: The student will acquire full mastery of the civil procedure vocabulary and will learn to share its principles, contents and application solutions with non-experts. Also through specific exercises, the student will develop his dialectical ability (including the rhetorical-persuasive function) in communicating the identified solutions to overcome civil procedural law issues.
Learning skills: The knowledge acquired and the method learned during the course will teach the student to keep his/her knowledge up to date through the autonomous use of scientific and jurisprudential sources, in order to deep his/her specialist knowledge in civil procedure. The student will therefore be able to understand and interpret autonomously the regulatory, doctrinal and jurisprudential news in the field, also in view of his/her post-graduate professional path.
Course Contents
The course will focus on civil procedural law. In particular, these are the topics to be addressed: general principles, ordinary and simplified cognition proceedings, review proceedings, enforcement proceedings, summary and special proceedings (limited to: labor proceedings, injunction proceedings, eviction proceedings, provisional proceedings, possessory proceedings). This corresponds to the study of articles 1-705 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Reference Books
Recommended textbook: Auletta, Diritto giudiziario civile. Principi e modelli della tutela giurisdizionale dei diritti, IV edizione, Zanichelli, 2026.
Alternatively: Verde, Diritto processuale civile, VII edizione, Zanichelli 2025, voll. 1, 2 e 3.
In any case, it is useful to consult the Code of Civil Procedure (cf. Codice di procedura civile sistematico, a cura di Boccagna, Giappichelli, 2025)
Teaching Methods
The course is organised on analytically announced weekly topics: frontal teaching is exclusively carried out by the Professor, who will ensure the learning of the different topics’s basic elements. In addition, and in line with course progression, seminars will be held, in which a particular topic of the broader theme already treated - chosen for its teaching potential - will be analyzed. The analysis will start from the questions involving the chosen institution which have already been surveyed by the doctrine or by the jurisprudence for their rate of problematicness and for the questionability of their solutions. For this part, the students will be supported by the teaching assistants, who will provide them with useful materials for the seminar experiment’s success.
Assessment Method
The final test will take place in oral form, but during the course, written learning verification tools will be used (mock trial and optional self-assessment and evaluation tests). Their successful completion will be taken into account for evaluation purposes, in a manner previously shared with the students.
Thesis assignment criteria
Assignment is not subject to special requirements
Week 1
Judicial request and judicial protection of rights (art. 24, 1 of the Constitution): forms of plaintiff’s summons and complaints.
The form of procedural acts. Nullity.
Week 2
Defendant’s reply and right of defense (Article 24, 2 of the Constitution): objection; counterclaim; third party joinder motion.
The audiatur et altera pars principle and its corollaries.
Week 3
First hearing before the Court established by law (articles 25, 108 and 111 of the Constitution).
Jurisdiction; competence; judicial panel composition. Translatio judicii.
Optional self-assessment test.
Week 4
Subjective and objective complexity of the civil process: standing; capacity to sue and to be sued; substitution; representation.
Claims consolidation.
Optional evaluation test.
Week 5
Evidence taking: civil trial models relativity, Civil Code rules and Code of Civil Procedure current choices (party disposition principle and evaluation of evidence).
Guided self-assessment test: multiple-choice questionnaire with motivation.
Learning by doing: practical case resolution.
Week 6
Judge’s provisions: orders and adjudicative orders
Decision stage and judgement models
Week 7
Judgment’s contents: party disposition principle, non ultra petita and iura novit curia principles
Classification and conditions of the action; reasoning (Article 111 of the Constitution).
Optional self-assessment test.
Week 8
Review proceedings: double degree of jurisdiction and forms of appeal.
Decision models
Learning by doing: practical case resolution.
Optional evaluation test.
Week 9
Court of Cassation: constitutional and legal functions. Appeal to the Court of Cassation. Art. 111 of the Constitution
Court of Cassation decision models.
Learning by doing: role playing. Procedural acts drafting, starting from a practical case.
Week 10
Judicial protection effectiveness within the framework of the Constitution and of the international and EU regulations (art. 117 of the Constitution): provisional measures.
The uniform provisional proceedings and the main provisional measures.
Week 11
Alternative or optional models of proceedings: simplified and labor proceedings; class action; voluntary proceedings.
Injunction proceedings.
Guided self-assessment test: multiple-choice questionnaire with motivation.
Week 12
Actions for coercive relief and their enforcement: nature, profiles and role of the judge. Astreintes. Forms of forced liquidation of assets
Forms of specific enforcement.
Learning by doing: mock trial.
Optional evaluation test.