Il pentimento come atto giuridico

This article explores the opportunity to conceptualize “repentance” as a legal notion. The same analysis was the object of Vincenzo Vitale’s former study pentimento e diritto: la nostalgia del perdono in which such an opportunity was denied due to the fact that “legal” repentance lacks an essential trait of repentance: the “suffered internal change” experienced by the repentant. This article argues in favor of a different solution, primarily conceptualizing repentance as a “social act”, a notion widely used in Adolf Reinach’s phenomenology. In § 1, this article concisely describes the main characteristics and presents a taxonomy of social acts. In § 2, it places re- pentance within such a taxonomy, conceptualizing it as a “complex social act”. Lastly, the article evaluates the opportunity to use the concept of repentance as a “complex social act” to describe legal forms of repentance, with specific reference to criminal law and restorative justice.