Skinner on Mussolini's Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State

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 

Italian Review of Legal History 11

[Italian Review of Legal History 11 (2025) has been published open access online.  Unsurprisingly, most of the contributions are in Italian.  We note those available in English below.  H/t: ESCLH Blog.  DRE.]

Sul Diritto dei popoli, il pensiero di John Rawls (English) 
Antonio Padoa Schioppa

La diserzione nel contesto della mobilitazione generale: Esperienza storica e sfide attuali (English) 
Serhii Khalymon, Liudmyla Litvin, Viktor Tyshchuk
 
Giurisdizione militare e stato democratico. Dalla giustizia dei capi alla legge 180/1981
Floriana Colao

Cura dei poveri e sicurezza sociale nell’Inghilterra di Età Tudor: Il ruolo dei Justices of the Peace
Dolores Freda

La colonizzazione democratica. Lotte per la terra, riforma agraria e attuazione costituzionale nel dopoguerra
Paolo Passaniti

Lo sviluppo della teoria dell’atto amministrativo come espressione dei valori del diritto amministrativo (English)
Andrzej Adamczyk

El espejo tiznado: el Tratado de París (1898) en la historia jurídica de Puerto Rico (English) 
José R. Gómez Biamón 

Il concetto di “popolo” nella prospettiva intergenerazionale
Raffaele Marzo

Un esame filosofico del patto sociale nella ricostruzione della società sudafricana (English) 
Konanani Happy Raligilia, Rorisang Gomolemo Thage, Lufuno Tokyo Nevondwe, Kolawole Olusola Odeku, Lesiba Benedict Moshoeu

Altri temi

Para uma história de gavetas: o projeto de código penal brasileiro de Galdino Siqueira (1913)
Ricardo Sontag

Schede bibliografiche

Recensione a Antonio Grilli, Resistenza e repressione. Il Tribunale speciale per la difesa dello Stato nella RSI (1943-1945), Roma, Carocci, 2024
Floriana Colao

Recensione a Paolo Passaniti, La riforma agraria in Italia. La Maremma dell’Ente Maremma, Pisa, Pacini, 2024
Federico Roggero

Il fascino dell’anomalia: leggendo Davide Rossi, Il lungo Novecento della frontiera adriatica. Transizioni istituzionali e modifiche giuridiche, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2025
Alberto Sciumè

Recensione a Mario Ascheri e Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The City-states in Late Medieval Italy, Roma, Viella Editrice, 2024
Claudia Storti

Dibattiti: Una storia non solo per storici. Presentazione della monografia di Marzia Lucchesi, Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti (1908-1914), Napoli, Satura Editrice, 2023 (San Salvatore Monferrato, 27 giugno 2025)
Introduzione al dibattito sul libro di Marzia Lucchesi Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti 1908-1914
Enrico Beccaria

Valeria Benetti e il lungo itinerario della questione femminile
Ettore Dezza

Considerazioni sul volume di Marzia Lucchesi Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti (1908-1914)
Giulia Giustetto

Alcune considerazioni tra passato e presente sul libro di Marzia Lucchesi Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti 1908-1914
Claudia Storti

L’attualità del pensiero e dell’opera di Valeria Benetti
Marzia Lucchesi

Steinberg's "Law and Mimesis in Boccaccio's Decameron"

Justin Steinberg, University of Chicago, has published Law and Mimesis in Boccaccio's Decameron: Realism on Trial (Cambridge University Press):

In Boccaccio's time, the Italian city-state began to take on a much more proactive role in prosecuting crime – one which superseded a largely communitarian, private approach. The emergence of the state-sponsored inquisitorial trial indeed haunts the legal proceedings staged in the Decameron. How, Justin Steinberg asks, does this significant juridical shift alter our perspective on Boccaccio's much-touted realism and literary self-consciousness? What can it tell us about how he views his predecessor, Dante: perhaps the world's most powerful inquisitorial judge? And to what extent does the Decameron shed light on the enduring role of verisimilitude and truth-seeming in our current legal system? The author explores these and other literary, philosophical, and ethical questions that Boccaccio raises in the Decameron's numerous trials. The book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval and early modern studies, literary theory and legal history.

--Dan Ernst

Kuehn, "Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy"

Cambridge University Press has published Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy (2022), by Thomas Kuehn (Clemson University). A description from the Press:

Family was a central feature of social life in Italian cities. In the Renaissance, jurists, humanists, and moralists began to theorize on the relations between people and property that formed the 'substance' of the family and what held it together over the years. Family property was a bundle of shared rights. This was most evident when brothers shared a household and enterprise, but it also faced overlapping claims from children and wives which the paterfamilias had to recognize. Thomas Kuehn explores patrimony in legal thought, and how property was inherited, managed and shared in Renaissance Italy. Managing a patrimony was not a simple task. This led to a complex and active conceptualization of shared rights, and a conscious application of devices in the law that could override liabilities and preserve the group, or carve out distinct shares for each member. This wide-ranging volume charts the ever-present conflicts that arose and were a constant feature of family life.

Praise from reviewers:

'Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy analyzes the family as part of the sharing economy at the intersection of law, property, and households in Renaissance Italy. It is an essential work for scholars seeking to understand the entangled development of individual legal rights amidst the increasing codification of family law and the evolving familial economy of medieval and Renaissance Italy.' -- Caroline Castiglione

'This important study features the creative tension between a legal environment oriented toward individuals and a social world that prized families and patrimonies. The writings of jurists who wrestled with this tension reveal a 'sharing economy,' a form of economic behavior whose existence upends our simple teleologies of gift and market.' -- Daniel Lord Smail

More information is available here. An interview with Professor Kuehn is available here, at New Books Network.

-- Karen Tani

CFP: Constitutional History: Comparative Perspectives

[We have the following call for papers. DRE]

Constitutional History: Comparative Perspectives.  September 14-15, 2023; Bologna, Italy.  An international conference sponsored by University of Illinois College of Law; University of Bologna Department of Legal Studies; and the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe–University of Bologna)

Paper proposals are invited for the Fifth Illinois-Bologna conference on Constitutional History: Comparative Perspectives. The conference will be held in Bologna at the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna on September 14-15, 2023.  The conference keynote speaker will be Professor Miroslaw Granat, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of Poland.  

Accompanying the spread of constitutional government around the world has been a profound interest in the comparative aspects of constitutional law. Scholars have catalogued the differing features of national constitutions and examined how different constitutional systems resolve common legal issues. So, too, judges faced with legal questions have sought guidance in the decisions of constitutional courts of other nations. While comparative constitutional law is therefore a well-established field, less attention has been paid so far to the comparative dimensions of constitutional history. This international conference series aims to address that shortcoming by energizing the study and analysis of constitutional history from comparative perspectives. It provides a forum for presentation and discussion of current research on issues of constitutional history that cross national boundaries. It also brings together scholars who, at present, are working on constitutional histories of single jurisdictions—with the expectation that conversations among these scholars will allow for sharing of methodologies and point also to fresh areas of research that may transcend national boundaries.

For 2023, the focus of the conference is Landmark Judgments.  Landmark judgments are foundational decisions that, rather than merely resolving a concrete case, set a key precedent, introduce a major legal principle or concept, or substantially impact the trajectory of the law. Such judgments, typically issued by Supreme Courts and Constitutional Courts, are found throughout the world. Examples include Marbury v. Madison (1803) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in the United States; Reference re Secession of Quebec (1998) in Canada; Décision Liberté d'association (1971) in France;  the Lüth Judgment (1958) in Germany; and S v Makwanyane and Another (1995) in South Africa.

Landmark judgments in constitutional cases invite numerous questions that can benefit from comparative analysis. How do landmark judgments become landmark? What is their history? What determines their trajectory? What kinds of influence do these leading cases exert at the domestic level? When, how and to what extent do landmark judgments exert influence in other jurisdictions? Do landmark judgments gain different meaning when they travel abroad? Who decides whether a case qualifies as a landmark? Do some jurisdictions produce more landmark judgments than others? How easy is it to challenge, overturn or displace a landmark decision? Can a ruling be a landmark if it is widely perceived as erroneous?  What is the role of landmark judgments outside of the courts, in the political sphere and in society more generally?

We invite papers that consider these and related questions about landmark judgments in constitutional cases and that can serve as the basis for a discussion among scholars interested in exploring landmarks from a comparative perspective. Papers that focus on a single jurisdiction—and even a single case—are welcome as are papers that examine landmark judgments from multiple jurisdictions.  

Scholars interested in presenting a paper at the conference should first e-mail a title and summary of the proposed paper along with a CV to Professor Jason Mazzone at mazzonej[@]illinois.edu. There is no word limit for the proposals but proposals in the range of 500-1,000 words are typical. Proposals received by April 1, 2023, will receive priority. After that date, submitted proposals will be considered if space remains.

For those whose abstracts are accepted, draft papers will be required for circulation to other participants three weeks prior to the conference.

Subject to the usual requirements of peer review, papers from the conference will be published as a single volume by Brill. Authors who accept an invitation to present a paper at the conference must agree to have the paper included in the published volume. Additional information about length and formatting requirements for the final versions of the papers will be provided to authors.

Conference participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Calabresi and Godi on Italian Constitutional History

Steven G. Calabresi and Matteo Godi have published Italian Constitutionalism and Its Origins in the Italian Law Journal 6:1 (2020): 23-53:

Focusing on the evolution of constitutional thought in Italy is key to understand not only Italy’s current legal order, but also constitutionalism more generally. In Italy, there has not been a true rupture point between the pre-unitary legal systems and the new constitutional order; a comprehensive study of Italian constitutional law, then, cannot do away with the preceding legal orders as modern textbooks do. And a study of modern constitutionalism cannot ignore Italy’s contribution: centuries of attempts at constitutionalizing, detached from any meaningful revolutionary vacuum. This Article sets out to fill that gap by focusing on the little known, three-centuries-long history of Italian constitutionalism, and it does so by offering many previously unpublished English translations of Italian constitutions. Part II discusses the genesis of modern constitutional thought in Italy. It focuses, in particular, on the Draft Constitution of Tuscany (1787); the Second Constitution of the Cisalpine Republic (1798); and the Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy (1802). Part III analyzes the Albertine Statute, the most famous pre-modern Italian constitution, first enacted in 1848 by the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia and later extended to the entire nation following the unification of Italy in 1861. Part IV briefly focuses on the 1948 Constitution of the Italian Republic – Italy’s current constitutional document. Part V extrapolates from this history in order to make a few normative claims. A brief conclusion follows.

--Dan Ernst

Essays on Fascist, Nazi and Authoritarian Criminal Law

Ideology and Criminal Law: Fascist, National Socialist and Authoritarian Regimes, edited by Stephen Skinner and published by Hart, is now available:

With populist, nationalist and repressive governments on the rise around the world, questioning the impact of politics on the nature and role of law and the state is a pressing concern. If we are to understand the effects of extreme ideologies on the state's legal dimensions and powers – especially the power to punish and to determine the boundaries of permissible conduct through criminal law – it is essential to consider the lessons of history. This timely collection explores how political ideas and beliefs influenced the nature, content and application of criminal law and justice under Fascism, National Socialism, and other authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. Bringing together expert legal historians from four continents, the collection's 16 chapters examine aspects of criminal law and related jurisprudential and criminological questions in the context of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Norway, apartheid South Africa, Francoist Spain, and the authoritarian regimes of Brazil, Romania and Japan. Based on original archival, doctrinal and theoretical research, the collection offers new critical perspectives on issues of systemic identity, self-perception and the foundational role of criminal law; processes of state repression and the activities of criminal courts and lawyers; and ideological aspects of, and tensions in, substantive criminal law.

–Dan Ernst

Monson on Crime in early modern Italy

In 2016, Craig A. Monson, Washington University in St. Louis, published Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-century Italy with the University of Chicago Press. From the publisher:

In April 1644, two nuns fled Bologna’s convent for reformed prostitutes. A perfunctory archiepiscopal investigation went nowhere, and the nuns were quickly forgotten. By June of the next year, however, an overwhelming stench drew a woman to the wine cellar of her Bolognese townhouse, reopened after a two-year absence—where to her horror she discovered the eerily intact, garroted corpses of the two missing women. 

Drawing on over four thousand pages of primary sources, the intrepid Craig A. Monson reconstructs this fascinating history of crime and punishment in seventeenth-century Italy. Along the way, he explores Italy’s back streets and back stairs, giving us access to voices we rarely encounter in conventional histories: prostitutes and maidservants, mercenaries and bandits, along with other “dubious” figures negotiating the boundaries of polite society. Painstakingly researched and breathlessly told, Habitual Offenders will delight historians and true-crime fans alike.

Praise for the book:

"Monson's Habitual Offenders is an enthralling amalgam of sex, violence, and scholarship. At the center of the story are the abduction and murder of two reformed prostitute nuns in Bologna in April of 1644. From this relatively banal event, the ramifications spread ever more widely, involving priests, nobles, cardinals, a king, and finally the pope himself. The most harrowing chapter of the story describes in detail the judicial murder of a prisoner by the illegal use of enhanced interrogation techniques. Plus ça change. . . ." –Frederick Hammond

"A box overflowing with exquisite linens and lace, a faux-marble cupboard with a cat painted on the side, and a red leather, reliquary crucifix whose ‘top’ had to be rescued from the convent sewer: Monson’s latest foray into the archives plunges readers into an early modern world that pullulates with signifying objects. Their meanings unfold in the long series of investigations that follow on the murder of two remarkable women, former prostitutes become nuns whose flirtatious acumen as laundresses kept an admiring clientele crowding the convent gate. In reconstructing their story, Monson delivers cut-to-the-quick truths about survival strategies for individuals and families, both great and small, caught in networks from Bologna, through Venice and papal Rome, reaching as far as Mazarin and the king of France." –Alison K. Frazier

 “Monson is both a careful historian and a compelling narrator, helping us delve deeply into the daily lives of seventeenth-century Italians from all regions and walks of life. What emerges is a page-turner of a whodunit made especially compelling by Monson’s extraordinary and subtle ability to convey the diverse personalities of his many historical subjects and to plunge his reader into the world of early modern Italian culture.” –Andrew Dell’Antonio

Further information is available here.