Biography

I graduated in Law summa cum laude from the University of Bologna and I earned a Ph.D. in “Constitutional Adjudication and Fundamental Rights” from the University of Pisa. I was a visiting student at the University of Chicago Law School and a visiting Ph.D. student at the Harvard Law School.
In 2006 I was awarded a research grant for a project on the discursive models of rational argumentation, that I carried out as associate researcher at the University of Bologna Law Department. I am a teaching assistant for the courses of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory at the University of Bologna Law School. I also collaborate with CIRSFID (University of Bologna) and I am a member of the editorial staff of Ratio Juris (Blackwell: Oxford).
My general research interests are in legal philosophy, constitutional theory and theory of rights. I am currently working on the relationship between law and morality, the status of constitutional rights and the viability of the “balancing approach” in constitutional adjudication.
My publications include articles and essays (on the neorepublican account of constitutional rights; on the “substantive due process” doctrine and judicial protection of “implied” constitutional rights; on the “Guantanamo” US Supreme Court cases; on Rawlsian constructivism) and a book on the Supreme Court’s role in the US constitutional system (forthcoming).