M. Caslini (2025), How Does the State’s Obligation to Prevent Genocide Overlap with and Differ from that of Offering Guarantees of Its Non-Recurrence?
The article of Martina Caslini, “How Does the State’s Obligation to Prevent Genocide Overlap with and Differ from that of Offering Guarantees of Its Non-Recurrence?” explores the relationship between a state’s obligation to prevent genocide and its obligation to offer guarantees of its non-repetition. Despite their formal distinction, the study demonstrates significant intersections in practice, addressing a largely neglected area of international law that is especially timely amid ongoing debates on state responsibility and transitional justice.
R. Cornelli (2025), The protection of authority as central axis of Italian criminal Policy
The protection of authority - addressed in more than one-third of the legislative text - emerges as the central axis of the entire package and a defining feature of a criminal policy that risks destabilizing the democratic balance between authority and individual freedoms
Towards Authoritarian Democracies? Paradoxes, assumptions, and trends in contemporary security policies
Is it accurate to claim that Italian society is facing such a substantial rise in violence and insecurity that urgent, emergency measures are warranted? Furthermore, what are the broader implications of such security policies for democratic governance and the rule of law?
G. Valducci (2025), The Writing of the “Homo Criminalis” in Foucault: From “Fragments of Life” to Autobiography
Through a careful analysis of Michel Foucault’s thought, the paper explores the role of the written word in the construction of the delinquent individual and the possibility of it becoming a tool for discursive resistance.
R. Cornelli (2024), L'uso eccessivo della forza e gli strumenti per prevenirlo
What is the threshold beyond which the use of force by law enforcement officers becomes illegitimate violence? This contribution aims to answer this question by describing the legal constraints set by international and national regulations, while also assessing how effectively these constraints operate in specific situations.
R. Cornelli (2024), Il potere di definire la pace e di uscire dalla guerra
In this brief contribution published in the journal Politeia, the concept of peace is examined through the lens of language theory, with the aim of considering the centrality of power dynamics inherent in language with respect to peace.
L. Squillace (2024), Vulnerable Youth. Resolução 20 and Operação Verão: two security measures in Rio de Janeiro.
The article aims to examine two urban security measures, the Resolução 20 (Resolution 20) and the Operação Verão (Operation Summer), implemented in Rio de Janeiro, and targeting young people in situations of social vulnerability. The first is aimed at children and adolescents living on the streets, while the second, carried out at the city’s main beaches, focuses on controlling young people from the outskirts and favelas.
L. Squillace, R. Cornelli, I. Cano (2024), Fear and Surveillance on the Beaches of Rio de Janeiro: the Operação Verão
This article presents the findings of a qualitative study on Operação Verão (Operation Summer), a police operation on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro targeting collective thefts attributed to young people from the peripheries: the arrastão. It analyzes the perceptions of beachgoers and law enforcement officers and demonstrates how citizens’ fears have evolved into a perpetual panic, demanding increasingly harsh security measures.
R. Cornelli (2024), Fidarsi, affidarsi, fare affidamento. L’ambiguità della fiducia nelle istituzioni
A social order based on trust rather than force inevitably leaves behind residual spaces – both internal and external border zones – where actions take place outside the framework of trust. These spaces serve to preserve order, reinforce social bonds, or legitimize established authority. The challenge, then, is not to envision a conflict-free society governed solely by trust, but rather to examine where, in any given society, the “rule of trust” loses ground. It is in these frontier zones that intervention is needed to prevent trust-based sentiments from ultimately sustaining the “force of law”.
The waste of security and the reasons for inclusiveness
Published on YouTube Prof. Roberto Cornelli’s lecture in Italian on the waste of security and the reasons for inclusiveness given at the School of Political Culture at the Casa della Cultura in Milan.