Side Notes on Three Lessons of Guido Calabresi

Abstract

The essay offers some comments about three lectures given by the US Federal Judge Guido Calabresi in Macerata in 2012. The lessons relate to the organization of the federal courts in the United States, the form and the role of judicial decisions within a federal system and the considerations about the death penalty offered by a judge strongly contrary to it. According to Melis these lessons return in an extraordinarily vivid and precise way the structure of the judiciary system and at the same time the subjective experience of a judge.