LIBRI DI SABINO CASSESE

The last quarter of a century has witnessed a veritable explosion of law in Italy: both the supply and the demand of justice have increased; new legal "actors" have appeared on the scene or seen their rôle strengthened; the numbers of students and graduates in law have increased; and there has been an increase in the rate of production of legal culture. The reasons for these changes are economic (industrialisation and the development of services), political (the new organisation of the legal system resulting from European integration) and social (the increase in the tendency to resort to litigation). That being said, however, these changes are accompanied by a degree of relative stability among other factors. The result is four contradictions: stability of the numbers of the magistracy vis-à-vis an increase in the number of cases heard; the continuity of the state vis-à-vis the development of local powers; the stability of the numbers of professors in legal disciplines vis-à-vis the increase in the number of law graduates; the inertia of legal stereotypes vis-à-vis modifications in legal culture.