Damiano
Canale
I am Professor of Philosophy of Law at Bocconi University. I study the structure of legal reasoning and the justification of legal decisions, and how these practices are being reshaped by the specialisation of knowledge, the spread of artificial intelligence and the interaction of multiple legal orders.
My Research
The unifying theme of my research is the idea that the content of law takes shape within institutional practices. These practices can be investigated by studying how legal actors articulate concepts, engage in legal reasoning, and justify their decisions. This interest has led me to engage with a range of issues: from the forms of legal argumentation to the limits of interpretation; from the role of experts in legal proceedings to the techniques of judicial review; and from conflicts between law and morality to contemporary legal pluralism. Each of these issues provides a perspective from which to examine how law acquires determinate content and shapes social practices. My research lies at the intersection of analytic philosophy of law, contemporary pragmatism, and the theory of institutions.
Academic Position
Selected Visiting Appointments
Current Projects
Inferentialism and Legal Normativity
This project develops an inferentialist account of legal reasoning, inspired by the philosophical work of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom, with the aim of explaining how legal norms acquire content within institutional practices.
- —Rule Following and Interpretive Correctness in Law
The Opacity of Law
This project focuses on the role played by expert knowledge in legal proceedings, whit a specific attention on those situation in which legal authorities gives effect to legal contents they do no fully understand.
- —Deciding what one does not understand: expert knowledge, opaque law, and legitimacy
Argumentation Theory
Based on the inferentialist framework of analysis mentioned above, this line of research explores the structure of the most important forms of legal reasoning in judicial decision-making.
- —Anticipar el futuro. El análisis de escenarios en la adjudicación constitucional
- —Chlorinated Chicken: Evidence, Inference, and Risk (with G. Tuzet)
- —The Impact of Legislative Intent on Judicial Decision-making: An Empirical Account (with F. Poggi and G. Tuzet)
Legal Concepts
Current work investigates the structure of legal concepts such as burdens of proof, judicial review, precaution, legislative intent, starting from they way there are used in legal practice.
- —Per una teoria generale delle norme che pongono oneri
- —Constitutional Incompatibility in the Kantian Space of Judicial Reasons
Legal Pluralism
Current work examines the epistemological assumptions underlying legal monism and legal pluralism, arguing that the central disagreement concerns the way in which legal reality becomes knowable. This project was originally conceived as a course in a undergraduate program in Global Law at Bocconi University.
- —The Epistemological Knot: the Unfinished Challenge of Legal Pluralism
Selected Publications
Selected Books
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En busca de lo implícito
This volume brings together philosophical-legal essays written over the course of twenty years. Despite variations in interests, language, and style, they share a common thread: investigating what remains implicit in the discourse of law and about law—that is, the background of theoretical and philosophical assumptions that gives meaning to the words of the legislator, of legal practitioners, and of scholars themselves. The central claim is that every legal discourse—the lawyer's opinion, the judge's reasoning, the official's administrative act, the jurist's analysis—presupposes, often unconsciously, answers to the classic questions of the philosophy of law: what law is, its origin and purpose, and how it relates to morality and politics. In doing so, each person takes on metaphysical, epistemological, metaethical, or political-theoretical commitments. Making these commitments explicit and critically discussing them is, for the author, an essential philosophical task: it allows for a clearer awareness of what law is for us and, at the same time, opens up the possibility of conceiving it differently.
The Planning Theory of Law. A Critical Reading
A collection of essays that grew out of a 2009 workshop at Bocconi with Scott Shapiro on his "planning theory of law." Writing first on a draft and then on the published version of Legality, the authors offer a critical reading that highlights both the merits of the theory and its problematic aspects, bringing out the differences between the continental/civil law and common law perspectives, and covering, on the whole, Shapiro's theory in its entirety.
Per una filosofia inferenzialista del diritto. Ragionamento e interpretazione giuridica
The essays collected here outline an inferentialist conception of legal reasoning, based on the idea that linguistic content arises from a "game of giving and asking for reasons." The volume offers an alternative account of the content of normative texts, the indeterminacy of norms, the limits of judicial discretion, and the distinction between express/unexpressed norms and extensive interpretation/analogy, with the aim of making explicit what is implicit in legal practice.
Conflitti pratici: Quando il diritto diventa immorale
What happens when the law imposes behaviors or denies opportunities that citizens perceive as unacceptable, in conflict with their own ultimate reasons for action? The book examines conflicts between law and morality that touch the personal sphere—the body, identity, emotional relationships, life projects—analyzing their structure through paradigmatic cases such as euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty, in order to help the reader build their own critical position.
La giustificazione della decisione giudiziale
In contemporary legal systems, judicial decisions must be justified through legal reasons, not merely a psychological account of the decision-making process. The book analyzes the logical aspects of legal argumentation, presenting the model of the judicial syllogism and the distinction between internal and external justification. It discusses both evidentiary arguments (concerning the reconstruction of facts) and interpretive arguments (concerning the norms applicable to the case).
Critical Thinking. Un’introduzione
Critical Thinking teaches how to distinguish good arguments from bad ones, drawing on logic, psychology, and the theory of argumentation and probability. The book introduces the role of reasoning in concrete contexts, and is organized in three parts: the definition and types of argument; deductive arguments (conditionals, counterfactuals); and non-deductive arguments (statistical and probabilistic reasoning, inference to the best explanation, analogy). Finally, it emphasizes how reasoning well helps in evaluating claims and making choices with greater awareness.
Courses taught at Bocconi University (2026/27)
General Jurisprudence
The expression “General Jurisprudence” usually refers to theoretical study of law, which tries to answer questions such as “What is law?”, “What distinguishes law from other social phenomena?”, “How is it the case that laws provide guidance to human behavior?”, etc. Traditionally, such questions have been approached through the lens of state law as it has developed in Western legal systems. However, this perspective increasingly fails to account for today’s legal realities. Although state law is still central to our lives, its regulatory function is intertwined with that of supra-national and international legal sources. At the same time, the forms of legal regulation and planning appear highly diversified and cannot be reduced to traditional, black letter law. Not to mention that different legal traditions tend to provide different answers to the question “What is law?”, to the point of casting doubt on the very idea that legality can be reduced to a set of universal features common to all polities that ever existed and will exist in the future. The course aims to reconstruct these different constellations of problems in order to provide students with a critical understanding of contemporary law, legal systems, and the forms of legality characterizing them. In addition, students will be introduced to the philosophical foundations of human rights, considered in light of the broader theoretical questions posed by general jurisprudence.
Digital Ethics
Digital technologies offer many benefits to individuals and society, and have brought about substantial changes in personal relations, style of life and individual capabilities. At the same time, digital technologies give rise to important ethical issues. In a number of circumstances, the implementation of digital technologies may generate unfair consequences, makes accountability opaque, and does not meet the requirement of transparency. To address these issues, specific paths of reasoning and evaluations are needed. The mission of this seminar is to introduce to the students the main problems and methods of digital ethics, seen as a branch of applied ethics. Furthermore, the seminar provides an overview of the European AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive regulation of artificial intelligence.
Critical Thinking
In a world shaped by social media and artificial intelligence, the ability to think critically—to evaluate the views of others, distinguish truth from falsehood, and make well-informed judgments—is more important than ever. Yet public debate, whether online or in other public forums, often becomes polarized, with personal attacks and ideological divisions replacing careful engagement with competing arguments. This weakens the quality of public discourse and collective decision-making, while making it more difficult to reach sound judgments on issues of both personal and social importance. The Critical Thinking seminar introduces students to the main forms of reasoning involved in knowledge acquisition and decision-making. It explores their logical structure, their application in different contexts, and the cognitive biases that can distort human reasoning.
Philosophy of law
The course is divided into two parts. The first part provides an introduction to the fundamental issues of contemporary legal philosophy through the works of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. Particular attention is devoted to the concepts of legal science, legal norm, legal order, the State, and sovereignty. The second part of the course adopts a thematic focus on legal pluralism, namely the view that law is best understood as the intersection of multiple normative orders or systems that claim authority to regulate social conduct. The course traces the historical origins of legal pluralism and examines its principal developments and competing interpretations in contemporary legal theory.
Courses taught in previous academic years and at other universities are listed in the CV
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