Tainted law? The Italian Penal Code, fascism and democracy
Skinner, Stephen J.
Date: 2011
Journal
International Journal of Law in Context
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publisher DOI
Abstract
The current Italian Penal Code is the direct descendant of the 1930 Rocco Code. Originally a hybrid of
authoritarian and liberal elements, but revised and reinterpreted in the post-war Republic, the Code
was nevertheless introduced under the Fascists and has not been definitively reformed or renamed.
Given such roots, this article ...
The current Italian Penal Code is the direct descendant of the 1930 Rocco Code. Originally a hybrid of
authoritarian and liberal elements, but revised and reinterpreted in the post-war Republic, the Code
was nevertheless introduced under the Fascists and has not been definitively reformed or renamed.
Given such roots, this article argues that the Code’s legitimacy can be questioned by considering the
significance of the Fascist past in terms of the Code’s symbolic, contextually narrative and memorial
dimensions. On this basis the article develops a concept of tainted law in order to ground and direct
analysis of law in relation to the anti-democratic past, arguing that critical engagement with the
connections between law and the darker episodes of twentieth-century politico-legal history is vital to
the construction and conservation of democratic legal systems today.
Law School
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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