Santi Romano

Santi Romano (31 January 1875 – 3 November 1947) was an Italian jurist, magistrate and politician.

Biography

He graduated in law in 1896 at the University of Palermo, where he was a student of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and worked for many years as a university lecturer.

He began his academic career in 1898 at the University of Palermo, teaching administrative law, and the following year in that of Camerino, and became professor of constitutional law at the University of Modena (1906), and then of administrative law at the University of Pisa (1909), constitutional law at the University of Milan (1925) and administrative and constitutional law at the Sapienza University of Rome (from 1928 to 1943).

He had a brilliant academic career, being appointed Dean of the Faculty of Law in Pisa, from 1923 to 1925, and in Milan, from 1925 to 1928. He was also a member of the Lincean Academy from 1935 to 1946, as well as a correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of Turin, and the Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Palermo and Modena. He was a member of the Academic of Italy (1939). During his life he received numerous honors: he was appointed by King Vittorio Emanuele III knight of the order, knight officer, commander, grand officer and grand cordon of the Crown of Italy.

Romano's contributions to legal theory

Santi Romano is known for being the main proponent, in Italy, of the institutionalist theory of law: according to this doctrine the legal norm, despite its importance, does not explain the whole world of law and indeed, to be qualified as legal, it must already arise from the law understood in its fundamental aspect. This makes it possible to understand, to use one of his expressions, that "Law, before being a norm and before concerning a simple relationship or a series of social relationships, is the organization, structure and position of the very society in which it takes place and which it constitutes as a unity, as an entity in its own right".

To summarize, therefore, law is an institution, hence the name of the theory. Consequently, since law springs from the structure of society, there is nothing to prevent the existence of a plurality of legal systems. In this consists one of the most innovative features of his theory, followed and appreciated even today.

Romano is also known for the elaboration of

• the theory of the pluralism of legal systems, developed in the second part of his main work, L'Ordinamento Giuridico, according to which the State is one of the existing legal systems, not the only one;
• the theory of necessity in the legal system, according to which necessity (or effectiveness) constitutes the primary source of law;
• the theory of sovereignty, according to which — given that the sovereignty of an order is identified with its originality — there are multiple sovereign orders (both public and private).

A particular concept of Santi Romano's is that of revolutionary violence, considered as legally organized violence and not violence as such. The theory of Santi Romano took its cue from that of Maurice Hauriou and was supported by Georges Renard, but not by the famous Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen, who entered into a lively controversy with the Sicilian professor.

Cesarini Sforza's 1929 essay "Il diritto dei privati", in which he develops Santi Romano's ideas, has become famous in the field. He proposes a vertical cleft in society in order to analyze it: on the surface would be the state rules; further down, the rules deriving from custom; finally, at the bottom, the rules of the private parties that, self-organizing, generate authentic legal orders. Cesarini says: "The multiplicity of legal orders is based on the creative spontaneity of legal consciousness".

Today the majority of the doctrine is lined up in favor of the normativist theory of the right, supported by the same Kelsen as well as by Norberto Bobbio. Among his many students there are Guido Zanobini, Vezio Crisafulli, Carlo Esposito and Massimo Severo Giannini. A role apart was that of his son Salvatore Romano — in turn full professor at the University of Florence — who deepened and developed the institutionalist thesis in the field of private law.

Works

• Principii di diritto amministrativo italiano (1901; 3rd updated edition, 1912)
• L'ordinamento giuridico (1918)
• Corso di diritto coloniale (1918)
• Corso di diritto internazionale (1926)
• Principi di diritto costituzionale generale (1945)
• Frammenti di un dizionario giuridico (1947)
• Scritti minori (1950)

References

• Sabino Cassese, "Ipotesi sulla formazione de 'L'ordinamento giuridico' di Santi Romano", Quaderni Fiorentini per la Storia del Pensiero Moderno, No. 1 (1972), pp. 243–83.
• Mariano Croce & Marco Goldoni, The Legacy of Pluralism: The Continental Jurisprudence of Santi Romano, Carl Schmitt and Costantino Mortati. Stangord: Stanford University Press (2020).
• Maximilian Fuchs, Die Allgemeine Rechtstheorie Santi Romanos. Duncker & Humblot (1979).
• Roman Schnur (ed.), Die Rechtsordnung von Santi Romano. Mit einem Vorwort, biograpischen und bibliographischen Notizen. Duncker & Humblot (1975).

External links

• Works by Santi Romano at Open Library
• Works by Santi Romano at Gallica