L’ultimo tabù: le radici canonistiche del diritto amministrativo inglese, in “Quaderni fiorentini”, 51 (2022).

The essay, after examining the most recent scholarship on the relationship between administrative law and canon law on one hand, common law and roman-canon law on the other, investigates the possible canonical roots of English administrative law. Re-examining the idea, handed down to us by the European legal tradition, of the absence of an “administrative law” in England at least until the 19th century, it traces the origins of the administrative norms in the country dwelling upon the development of the administrative powers assigned since the 15th century to the justice of the peace. Focusing on the characters of the many and great administrative functions of such a magistrate, which made him a fundamental ganglion of the English local administration, guaranteing an almost complete monopoly of the administrative activity until the beginning of the 19th century, the article suggests a possible role played by the Church administrative techniques, models and rationality on their origins, modes and development through the centuries.