30 Facts About Vittorio Scialoja

Vittorio Scialoja's early focus was on Roman law, but he later broadened the scope of his research and teaching to embrace other branches of civil law.

Vittorio Scialoja was born at Turin where his father, the exiled Naples economist-politician Antonio Scialoja had settled with his family and built a career at the university following a conservative revival in the south during 1849.

Vittorio Scialoja's mother, born Giulia Achard, was the daughter of a successful French businessman.

Vittorio Scialoja attended the Sapienza University of Rome, receiving a first degree in 1877 in return for a project "on the Precarium in Roman law".

Vittorio Scialoja took as his topic "Positive Law and Equity".

Vittorio Scialoja was still very young, and the appointment was controversial in some quarters.

Already Vittorio Scialoja was breaking out beyond the confines implied by his professorial mandate, and applying himself to some of the contemporary legal issues of the age.

Vittorio Scialoja's voice was raised not in opposition to "equita comune", expressive of a shared popular aspiration in favour of a certain "common sense" justice, and a will that reaches a level of intensity deserving recognition through a force external to the legal code.

Vittorio Scialoja insisted on allowing ample scope for the analysis, both of sources, and of connections and associations, some of which reached beyond the confines of the traditional syllabus.

Vittorio Scialoja established the law faculty's "Circle of jurists" which met regularly for seminars and animated discussions.

Vittorio Scialoja teamed up with the criminologist Enrico Ferri to promote the launch of the associated journal, "Studi senesi".

Also dating from this period is an open letter which Vittorio Scialoja addressed to Senator-Professor Filippo Serafini for his "Archivio Giuridico" "on the Methodology for Teaching Roman Law in Italian universities: "We do not need to be under any delusions.

Admirers assert that the eminence and respect which Vittorio Scialoja earned during his years at Rome, both for his work the field of Roman Law and in legal scholarship more broadly, raised the status of Legal Studies across Italy and amply justified his appointment.

Three years after his arrival at La Sapienza, Vittorio Scialoja inaugurated the university's Institute of Roman Law, himself taking on the role of "institute secretary in perpetuity".

Directly after establishing the institute, in 1888, Vittorio Scialoja launched the "Bullettino dell'Istituto di diritto romano", a specialist periodical dedicated to Roman Law, which has acquired a life of its own, and is still published annually.

In terms of building up the university law school Vittorio Scialoja displayed an exceptional ability, not merely through his rare teaching talents, but in his selection and training of young scholars.

In 1924 Vittorio Scialoja accepted an invitation to serve as president over the first of four sub-commissions appointed by the royal commission mandated to draw up a revised legal code, in order to build on and supplement that of 1865.

Commentators conclude that, despite frequent attempts by Vittorio Scialoja to solicit input from the government, even after the Matteotti assassination which horrified the Italian legal and academic establishments, the leader was uninterested and government members were reluctant to engage in discussion of substantive reforms to the code.

Vittorio Scialoja accordingly tried to resist any wide-ranging redefinition of "private law", which at that time could only have been viewed as a fundamental distortion of an established structure, with a liberal impetus which would have served only to encourage and hasten the already pervasive infiltration of totalitarian, corporatist and interventionist principles that was a feature of Mussolini's Italy.

Such considerations lay behind the "incorrigible scepticism" with which Vittorio Scialoja was reproached by the Fascist Foreign Minister Dino Grandi when, during the course of this process, the two men found themselves on opposite sides of the argument over the still unresolved question of whether or not the justice system should be clearly separated from politics.

Vittorio Scialoja therefore came to see it as his principal objective as president of the sub-committee on Civil Law reform, to avoid upending the Civil Code of 1865, in ways that would facilitate the intensification of Fascist control over the lives of individuals.

Vittorio Scialoja served as mayor for the little island of Procida between 1914 and 1925, apart from a nine month hiatus during 1920.

Vittorio Scialoja served, fort a time, as a Rome city councillor.

Senator Vittorio Scialoja attended the peace conference as a member of the little Italian delegation under the leadership of Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino.

Vittorio Scialoja then served between 1921 and 1932 as Italy's principal delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva, winning plaudits from colleagues and commentators for the quickness of intellect, legal rigour and breadth of knowledge that he brought to the role.

Vittorio Scialoja returned to government, now under the leadership of Paolo Boselli, on 19 June 1916.

Sources differ over precise timelines, but in around November 1919 Vittorio Scialoja, who was already a key member of the little Italian delegation at Versailles, took over the Foreign Affairs portfolio, serving till 15 June 1920, following the collapse of the short-lived and terminally divided Nitti government.

Vittorio Scialoja retired from his university teaching in 1931, by which time he was 75.

Vittorio Scialoja's health declined rapidly and visibly during the next couple of years.

Vittorio Scialoja acquired a number of honorary professorships within Italy and abroad, and was a member of various learned societies and associations.