The physical body through the juridical lens: an issue of law of innovation and of innovation in law (XIX-XX cent.)

The paper focuses on some interrelated issues, evoking experiences of extra-, trans- and endo-juridical innovation that contemplate the body as an object of law in '800-'900 European and Italian legal history. The body is here considered (1) in its immediate physical dimension - the body as an in-available good and the body as an active or passive subject of crime, in the kaleidoscope of criminological, anthropological and sociological theories developed since the second half of the nineteenth century; (2) from the (mediate) profile of its representation, both (i) concrete, as an image - we can think of works of art, photography, cinema, therefore the rights and obligations arising from the new techniques of reproduction and diffusion of the image, and from the new needs of exploitation, but also of protection of the image - both (ii) as a vehicle/symbol of individual rights with collective relief (for example the body as object of care, with the first hints of 'right to health' through the theme of drug law). It is a 'body' that goes through a phase of transition towards a new definition, also juridical, to which the innovation on a broadly understood side contributes in a substantial way. In the considered decades, these changes reflects on the jurist: the traditionally applied models, the known tools, the usual strategies and argumentative techniques are inadequate, incomplete or forced, and the juridical discourse needs to be innovated from the depths too.