An Example of Militant Anti-Fascism between the Work at the Bar and the Limits of a ‘Fascist Legality (an Overview of I. Birocchi, «Emilio Lussu giurista (1910-1927). La formazione giovanile, la concezione autonomistica e l’esercizio dell’avvocatura»)

Abstract

The paper summarizes the intellectual biography of Emilio Lussu written by Italo Birocchi. One of the aspects that are emphasized is that Lussu has always been deeply aware of the unquenchable link between the sphere of politics and law. In this sense, Lussu’s story takes on the paradigmatic value of a ‘case study,’ which allows us to broaden our gaze to the relationship between law and politics in the years of Fascism, and in particular to the contribution of many jurists to ‘Fascist legality’ – to say it in Birocchi’s terms. If there is no doubt that there has been a ‘fascistization’ of legal disciplines, the respective contributions to the formation of a fascist culture have yet to be the subject of a complete and capillary analysis. The paper also dwells on what Birocchi calls the ‘legend of the jurists,’ and it poses further historiographical problems on the forms and spaces of resistance even occult to the regime, not by the class of jurists as a whole (there was no such resistance), but by individual protagonists of the legal life of the time. Besides, Birocchi’s book identifies new very interesting research paths.