Prof. Mantovani's lectures present Roman law as a technique of thought, a tool for governing social relations, and also as an expression of Roman society, the cultural imprint of which is preserved in law. His method is to invite the public to read the documents in order to rediscover the world of ancient Rome. His lectures focus on a number of thematic areas: the literary dimension of the works of Roman jurists; the persistence of classical Roman law as the "hidden structure" of judicial practice and teaching in Late Antiquity; the historiography of legal culture, i.e. ancient and modern ideas about the past of law; and the conceptual lexicon of law, its values and techniques. Considering the hold that Roman law exerted in Europe from the XIthcentury onwards, understanding this rich interpretative heritage means reappropriating a fundamental element of the European legal tradition and practicing, also for our time, a technique for the reasoned resolution of conflicts.
Since 2016, he has also been in charge of the lecture on the history of Late Antique institutions at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano). Since 2017, he has co-organized a workshop on the sources of Roman law at the École française de Rome.
