Professor Michele TARUFFO

University of Pavia

Italy

 

Born in 1943, since 1976 Michele Taruffo is Professor of Law in the School of Law of the University of Pavia (Italy), where he teaches  Civil Procedure and for several years taught also Comparative Procedural Law and Dispute Resolution. Currently he also teaches a course on Methods of Dispute Resolution in the doctorate on Economy, Law and Institutions of the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS) of the University of Pavia, and a course on Techniques of Legal Argumentation in the School for Legal Professions of Pavia-Milano.

 

As a visiting professor, Michele Taruffo taught courses on Comparative Civil Justice and seminars on the Theory of Evidence at the Cornell Law School in the years 1994, 1995 and 1996, and at the Hastings College of the Law of the University of California in San Francisco in the year 2003.

 

Professor Taruffo is a member of: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the American Law Institute, the Bielefelder Kreis, the International Association of Procedural Law, the Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Processual, the Academia Brasileira de Direito Constitutional, the Association Henri Capitant des Amis de la Culture Juridique Francaise, the Associazione Italiana di Diritto Comparato, the Associazione Italiana tra gli Studiosi del Diritto Processuale, and other associations in the domains of procedural law, comparative law, jurisprudence and legal theory. He is also a member of the scientific boards of several legal and philosophical journals in Italy and abroad.

 

Professor Taruffo is currently a Vice-President of the International Association of Procedural Law and a Vice-President of the Scientific Committee of the 3rd Conference on Evidence Law and Forensic Science (Bejing, China). He is also a honorary professor of  the Instituto de la Judicatura Federal of Mexico and an Académico Honorario of the Academia Peruana de Derecho.  He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the “Centro Studi Federico Stella sulla giustizia penale” and a scientific advisor of the ETS publisher (Pisa, Italy) for the collection JURA, and of the Editorial Marcial Pons (Madrid-Barcelona-Buenos Aires) for the collection on civil procedure.

 

In 2010 Professor Taruffo received a honorary degree in law from the Universidad Austral of Valdivia (Chile).

 

Professor Taruffo published several  books: Studi sulla rilevanza della prova (1970); La motivazione della sentenza civile (1975), published also in Spain; Il processo civile “adversary” nell’esperienza americana (1979), published also in Colombia;  La giustizia civile in Italia dal ‘700 ad oggi (1980); Il vertice ambiguo. Saggi sulla Cassazione civile (1991), published also in Peru; La prova dei fatti giuridici. Nozioni generali (1992), published also in Spain; Sui confini. Scritti sulla giustizia civile (2002), published also in Colombia; Cinco lecciones mexicanas (2002): La prueba (2009) (forthcoming also in Portuguese and in English);  Páginas sobre justicia civil (2009); La semplice verità. Il giudice e la costruzione dei fatti (2009) (publidhed also in Spanish and Portuguese); La prueba. Articulos y Conferencias, Santiago de Chile 2009. Taruffo is also author of the chapter on Evidence in the vol.XVI of the International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law (published in 2009).

 

With Geoffrey C. Hazard he published American Civil Procedure. An Introduction (1993), also published in Italy, Spain, Japan and China. With L.P.Comoglio and C.Ferri he published Lezioni sul processo civile (5th ed., 2010). He also edited the book Abuse of Procedural Rights (1999). With Federico Carpi he is also editor of the Commentario breve al codice di procedura civile (6th ed., 2009).

 

Professor Taruffo published several dozens of essays on procedural, comparative and philosophical topics, in Italy and abroad. He delivered lectures in many Universities including  Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Tulane, Toronto, Cornell, Hastings, London, Oxford, Madrid, Barcelona, Castellon, Palma de Mallorca, Paris, Frankfurt, Krakow, Warsaw, Lublin, Tokyo, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Mexico, Morelia, Rovaniemi, Helsinki, Turku, Tbilisi, Moscow, Montevideo, Puerto Madryn, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Bogotà, Medellin, Pereira, Cali, Cartagena de Indias, Lima, Santiago de Chile.

 

With Geoffrey C.Hazard he was co-reporter of the American Law Institute and UNIDROIT project concerning Principles and Rules for Transnational Civil Procedure.

 

Professor Taruffo’s main fields of interest are: civil litigation and dispute resolution, transnational litigation and arbitration, comparative law of evidence, comparative civil justice, jurisprudence, adjudication and legal theory, epistemology,  legal history.