The Department's research activity is characterized by a marked heterogeneity of the topics under scientific investigation and variety of interests even within individual scientific-disciplinary fields. Research is firmly connected to teaching and to the third mission, in the sense that the results of scientific investigation are returned as much to the student community (during lectures, laboratories or special seminars) as to legal professionals and civil society (in the form of conferences, workshops or public engagement activities directed at the development of legal culture and the promotion of legality).
In this regard, the Department of Law claims and intends to cultivate the role of legal science as a source not only of technical knowledge, but first and foremost of indispensable tools for knowledge of reality and mediation between scientific knowledge and the concrete needs of man, society and the environment. Thus, the task of research is not only passively subordinated to the needs of the market; rather, scientific research aims to show the historical, philosophical and cultural assumptions of normative choices, critically rereading them in the light of the different perspectives of the construction of values on which the legal system rests, with a careful and ready eye to the international perspective and the suggestions coming from the experience of legal comparison.
More specifically, research reflects a variety of scientific and cultural interests that has resulted in several university-funded, national, European and international projects.
The most recent include a European project funded by OLAF on “Europe Against Cyber VAT frauds,” as well as two interdepartmental FAR projects on the legal regulation of waste management and remotely piloted vehicles.
In addition, alongside the study on anti-discrimination law and different forms of vulnerability, on the prevention of radicalization, on security and on agribusiness fraud - topics, these, developed by two different observatories and research centers of the Department: the CRID AND the OISFA - several research projects have been implemented concerning very diverse topics: among others, those on stalking, cyberstalking and cyberbulling; legal problems arising from migration phenomena; religious freedom and multiculturalism; urban security; and “criminal matters” between national and European law; the safeguarding of children's rights between national and international legislation; the exploitation of child labor, with special reference to Emilia Romagna; tax, corporate and financial regulation of innovative enterprises; the history of criminal justice in the modern age; and fedecommissum as a function of negotiated amnesty in Roman legal experience.