LIBRI DI RICCARDO MAZZOLA

This article takes on Ignasi Terradas’ latest book La justicia más antigua (2019) in the attempt to conceptualize "vindicatory justice" through a formalization - inspired by Theodor Geiger’s Vorstudien zu einer Soziologie des Rechts - of its fundamental notions and principles. This study identifies (I) three key concepts constituting an essential lexicon of vindicatory justice: (I.i) offense, (I.ii) defenselessness (I.iii) composition; and (II) three basic principles underlying vindicatory justice: (II.i) principle of universal answerability (PUA) (II.ii) principle of reconciliation (PR) (II.iii) principle of ancillary vengeance (PAV).

As a central element of certain systems of justice, revenge-feuding actions are usually consid-ered as unregulated responses to offenses and misbehaviours modern law has solved and dis-placed. On the contrary, the theoretical paradigm of "vindicatory justice" highlights how these actions are not spontaneous reactions. Rather, they are submitted to forms of collective surveil-lance and authorization, and they may constitute a different form of conceiving and materializ-ing justice. In fact, historical and ethnographic case studies have proved how vindicatory jus-tice has not disappeared, being rather outdone in its relationship with the law of the State. Working on the two case studies of Shuar (West Ecuador) and Yolngu (Australia), this essay aims to elucidate the idiosyncrasy inherent to vindicatory cultures and highlight their complex relationship with State law.