Stephen Skinner, University of Exeter, has published Subversion and the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State in Fascist Italy, 1927–8, in the American Journal of Legal History:
In 1925, Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini began to transform his government into a dictatorial regime, cracking down on political opposition and anti-Fascist activities, which were referred to as ‘subversion’. The 1926 ‘ultra-Fascist’ Law No 2008 established a new criminal court, the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State, to deal with subversive activities that were deemed to constitute political crimes against the regime’s security. Although a large body of academic literature on the Special Tribunal continues to grow, the details of the subversion cases that came before it, and what they can reveal about anti-Fascist activity and the regime’s response, have received limited attention. Based on an extensive study of Special Tribunal decisions in subversion cases during the first two years of its operation (1927–8), this article builds a systematic analysis of what subversive activities involved, how they were charged and tried, what the Special Tribunal decided, and how its judgments can be understood in the overall context of Fascism. The article provides a framework for analysing political judgments by focusing on their form and functions, and shows how the Fascist regime’s reliance on the ritual of a trial and legal judgment had performative, repressive, propagandistic, and educative dimensions that ultimately underscore Fascism’s falsification of legality.
--Dan Ernst
