Late medieval Florence offers special opportunities for the study of justice and criminality: the largest judicial archive of the age, a lively historiographical tradition, a rich social history and complex political organization. These advantages have favoured a flowering of studies – concentrating on institutional aspects and on criminal justice – that now allow a credible general picture to be drawn of the development of criminality and of changes in judicial organization from the mid fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. Many aspects and problems, however, remain unexplored, as the methodology and concepts in use, in studies of Florence as of other cities, have been slow to progress. The historiography of Renaissance Italy, still set in its Burckhardtian mould, has shown an unwillingness to open up to other areas of research, and this contrasts with the wealth of the available documentation. In addition to aspects as yet unexplored, there is a failure to take account of research and interpretative models arising from other times and places: for example, the problems regarding the transition from community-based forms of law and social control to state forms; or the interaction between different judicial systems, that is, between public justice and other infra-judicial forms of settling disputes; or analysis of the emergence of a public penal system; or the role of jurists and legal experts in the production of law and in judicial activity.