Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, a current of historical and sociological studies have understood identification processes mainly as the progressive affirmation of the state's bureaucracies and surveillance knowledges and technologies. The aim of this article is to shift attention from the policing procedure and sources to judicial ones, showing that the need to identify and be identified did not emerge solely from state requirements for control. An examination of the lying inheritance's judicial procedures by which legitimate heirs could prove their identity and rights of succession, in the early modern State of Milan and Republic of Venice, will throw light on the social and judicial use of practices aimed to grant individuals identity and legal personality allowing them to claim and defend fundamental rights such as succession and property rights.