She graduated in Law at the University of Bari, discussing a thesis with the supervision of Professor Gino Giugni.
On May 31st 2017, she was awarded by the President of the Republic with the honour of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
With Decision of the Council of the European Union (EU) 2021/2232 of 14 December 2021, from 1 March 2022, and for a period of four years, she has been appointed as member of the panel provided for in Article 255 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, in order to give an opinion on candidates’ suitability to perform the duties of Judge and Advocate-General of the Court of Justice and the General Court.
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She was Harkness Fellow at UCLA and Harvard Law School (1974-1976); Fulbright Fellow at UCLA (1985), Visiting Professor in several Universities, among which Warwick (Leverhulme Professor), Columbia Law School (BNL Professor), Cambridge (where she held the Arthur Goodhart Chair in Legal Science 2006-2007), Stockholm, Lund, University College London, LUISS Rome.
She also taught at the Faculty of Economics and Banking, University of Siena.
At the European University Institute, where she held the chair in European Labour and Social Law (1994-2003), she was Head of the Law Department in 1995-1996 and Director of the Program on Gender Studies (2002-2003).
At the European University Institute, she directed international projects leading to edited books, in particular Public Services and Citizenship in European Law, with M. Freedland (Oxford University Press 1998); Labour Law in the Courts. National Judges and the European Court of Justice (Hart 2001); Employment Policy and the Regulation of Part-time Work in the European Union (Cambridge University Press 2004), with P. Davies and M. Freedland.
She worked in cooperation with the European Commission in numerous research projects.
She was involved in a comparative research project with South African lawyers, leading to the publication of: R. le Roux, B. Hepple, S. Sciarra, (eds), Laws against Strikes. The South African Experience in an International and Comparative Perspective, F. Angeli 2015.
She holds Ph.D. Honoris Causa in Law at the Universities of Stockholm (2006) and Hasselt (2012).
She has been for several years co-editor of the journal Giornale di Diritto del Lavoro e di Relazioni Industriali.
Recently, she published:
First and Last Word: Can Constitutional Courts and the Court of Justice of the EU Speak Common Words?, Eurojus, 3-2022, pubblicato anche in WP C.S.D.L.E. “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 159/2022 e in Primera y última palabra: ¿Pueden los tribunales constitucionales y el Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea pronunciar palabras comunes? La Ley Unión Europea, Nº 106, Septiembre 2022, LA LEY
‘Effetto farfalla’. La sentenza n. 33 del 1960, Osservatorio dell’Associazione Italiana dei Costituzionalisti 2021
Diritti e poteri nei luoghi di lavoro. Una lettura dello Statuto dei lavoratori nel tempo della pandemia, Relazione tenuta nel convegno organizzato presso l’Accademia dei Lincei, ora in Moneta e Credito 2021
Una ragionevole responsabilità. Il caso della Corte costituzionale, Psiche 2021
Lenti bifocali e parole comuni: antidoti all’accentramento nel giudizio di costituzionalità, Federalismi 2021
Gino Giugni, Idee per il lavoro, (a cura e con Introduzione) Laterza, 2020
Voce “Lavoro”, in X Appendice della Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, lettere ed arti, 2020
How will Social Europe be in the 20s?, in German Law Journal, 2020
Social Rights Before the Italian Constitutional Court – A Voice from the Bench, in Soziales Recht, 2019
Prove di solidarietà in alcune sentenze della Corte costituzionale, in Rivista di Diritto della Sicurezza sociale, 2019
Social Rights as Human Rights, in Liber Amicorum Guido Raimondi, Essays in Honour of Guido Raimondi, Wolf Legal Publishers, 2019
Rule of Law and Mutual Trust: a Short Note on Constitutional Courts as “Institutions of Pluralism”, in The Role of Constitutional Courts in the Globalised World of the 21st Century, Constitutional Court of the Republic of Latvia, 2019, e in Il Diritto dell’Unione europea, 2018
Solidarity and Conflict. European Social Law in Crisis, Cambridge University Press, 2018
Certezza del diritto e principi fondamentali del diritto europeo, in Liber Amicorum Antonio Tizzano, Giappichelli, 2018, anche in Derecho de las relaciones laborales, 2018
First and Last World: Can Constitutional Courts and the Court of Justice of the EU Speak Common Words?, Eurojus, n. 3/2022