Academic literature on the topic 'Dionisio Anzilotti'

In 1931 Lauterpacht described the Italian scholarship as characterized by a ‘rigid and frequently uncompromising positivist school in international law’. While his statement has some merits, this chapter seeks both to illustrate how this trend emerged from previous approaches and, conversely, to emphasize the multifaceted perspectives that were effectively present in those decades, thus partly circumscribing Lauterpacht’s assertion. Following a survey of the fluid approaches present at the beginning of the twentieth century, this chapter will introduce the pivotal role of Dionisio Anzilotti in favoring legal positivism, even if dissident voices were still present or subsequently emerged. After Anzilotti, other poles of attraction emerged, in particular through Santi Romano and other scholars, who, while still claiming to adhere to the lines of positive law, deprived this conception of several of its original theoretical attributes. Conversely, few attempts were made to elaborate doctrines aimed at reflecting the political ambitions of Fascism, which was unsuccessful in influencing the broad theoretical debate.

This chapter analyzes the role played by legal journals as ‘tools’ for international law studies in Italy. The author considers their role in the development of this subject in the domestic arena, where there were no specialized legal journals expressly devoted to these topics until 1898. The early journals represented ephemeral experiments, prior to the foundation of the Rivista di diritto internazionale in 1906 under the leadership of Dionisio Anzilotti. The Rivista represented a turning point in this branch of law and was followed by other periodicals established in the 1930s and 40s, which were partly inspired by the political milieu characterizing Fascist Italy, and by those that developed in the aftermath of World War II, which were influenced in turn by the theoretical and methodological premises of the time and by accentuated contrasts between different academic ‘schools’ of thought. Lastly, the author evaluates how the Italian journals of international law dealt with foreign scholars and foreign languages.