Vittorio Giulio Ippolito Camillo Scialoja (; 24 April 1856 – 19 November 1933) was an influential Italian Professor of Jurisprudence. His early focus was on Roman law, but he later broadened the scope of his research and teaching to embrace other branches of civil law. Membership of the , on which he served between 1893 and 1913, led to his nomination as a senator on 4 March 1904. That in turn became the launch pad for an increasingly engaged parallel career in politics and public life. He served briefly as Minister of Justice in 1909/10, Minister without portfolio between 1916 and 1917, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs during 1919/20.
Biography Provenance and early years Vittorio Scialoja was born at Turin where his father, the exiled Naples economist-politician (1817–1877) had settled with his family and built a career at the university following a conservative revival in the south during 1849. After unification the family moved to Florence, the new capital for a new kingdom, where Vittorio spent the second half of his childhood, attending the prestigious secondary school. Vittorio's mother, born Giulia Achard (1823-1878), was the daughter of a successful French businessman.
He attended the Sapienza University of Rome, receiving a first degree in 1877 in return for a project "on the Precarium in Roman law". The dissertation was published shortly afterwards. It was common at this time for Italian students of Jurisprudence, especially where the focus was on Roman Law, to spend a period of study in a German university, but Vittorio Scialoja, confident in his own intellectual rigour and inherent autodidacticism, stayed in Italy. He contemplated building a career in the judiciary. Growing up as the son of Antonio Scialoja, Vittorio was on the receiving end of sound advice from a number of the leading politicians of the day, who were regular guests in the family home. It was at the urging of one of these Pasquale Mancini, that he set these thoughts aside, in favour of a career in the universities sector. Still aged just 23, he accepted a position as Professor of Roman Law at the University of Camerino in June 1879. He remained at Camerino for only one year. That was long enough to make his mark, however, notably with his inaugural lecture, delivered in the main lecture hall at the little university's "Valentinia Library" on 23 November 1879. He took as his topic "Positive Law and Equity" ().
Siena At the end of 1880 he accepted an invitation to move across to Siena, where he was installed as Extraordinary Professor of Roman Law on 18 January 1881. He was still very young, and the appointment was controversial in some quarters. The full professorship nevertheless followed on 17 November 1883. Already 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. Pursuing the theme that he had ventilated at Camerino he continued to work away at the tensions between Positive Law and Equity. His conclusion, in summary, was that the extent of the conflict between the two had been much exaggerated. In the Roman/Italian law mindset of mainland Europe in the late nineteenth century, Equity could only be properly invoked where it could be directly translated into the provisions of the legal systems. It enjoyed no stand-alone status as some kind of an ethical dictate to be applied according to judicial whim. The theme was one which he continued to develop during the decades that followed, and should on no account be viewed simply as traditionalist one-sided legalism. It should be viewed, rather, in the context of the perceived extreme institutional fragility of the newly created Italian state, and the range of powerful "disintegrating forces" that challenged, along with the cohesion of the state, the itself. After 1922 some of the dangers inherent in the scope for interpretation implicit in the "Equity"-driven approach became all too clear. Scialoja's voice was raised not in opposition to "equità 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. The dangers came, rather, from the risk of an overmighty legislature finding ways to use the doctrine on Equity to thwart judicial independence.
During 1881, soon after he had accepted the Siena appointment, news came through that Scialoja had been placed at the top of the list in a competitive process to secure a teaching chair at Catania, but he rejected the Sicilian offer, and remained at Siena for four years. His academic reputation was well established by the end of just a year as a professor or Camerino, but he was nevertheless unusual among his professional colleagues/rivals in not having received any post graduate degree. The extent to which he was self-taught was one of the reasons why his teaching approach, despite being both innovative and rigorous, was somewhat outside the mainstream. It was clearly not to the liking of all his students. He 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. This came as a shock to students who had grown accustomed to the more conventional approach of his predecessor, Luigi Moriani. Moriani had enjoyed the additional advantage, in the eyes of university (and city) traditionalists, of being a native-born Senese. In May 1881 the classroom tensions had grown into a revolt among Scialoja's students. That was followed by the suspension of his lectures by the university's Academic Council. (The lectures were quickly reinstated through a direct intervention from Rome by Guido Baccelli, the Education Minister.) Notwithstanding the student revolt during 1881, Scialoja's four years at Siena can be seen as a period of significant achievement. Promoted to a full professorship in 1883/84, he taught several students who went on to achieve notability on their own account, including the jurist and Roman Law specialist and the lawyer-pianist Dante Caporali. He established the law faculty's "Circle of jurists" which met regularly for seminars and animated discussions. He 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 Scialoja addressed to Senator-Professor for his "Archivio Giuridico" (study series on Roman Law published between 1863 and 1903) "on the Methodology for Teaching Roman Law in Italian universities: "We do not need to be under any delusions. Pure Roman Law is dead, and while modern law may be descended from it, it is not the same .... [but] far from diminishing the importance [of Roman Law as a topic for study], perhaps this increases it".V. Scialoja, Sul metodo d’insegnamento del diritto romano nelle università italiane. Lettera al Prof. F. Serafini, in Archivio Giuridico, XXVI, (1881), pp. 489-490.R. Orestano, Introduzione allo studio del diritto romano, Bologna 1987, pp. 506-507
Rome After three years at Siena Scialoja received the call from Rome. He was installed as "Ordinary [i.e. full] Professor of Roman Law at the University of Rome" with effect from 11 May 1884, retaining his professorship at Rome till his retirement from teaching in 1931. An important step in his university career came on 31 December 1922 when he left his professorial chair in Roman Law in order to become Professor of Roman Law Institutions at the university. Candidates were ranked through competitive process, and he found himself competing directly for the appointment with several of the later Serafini's most eminent and influential pupils. Initially he missed out on the appointment, but then the exercise undertaken and conclusions reached by the Examining Commission were voided through a ministerial intervention. Admirers assert that the eminence and respect which 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. Without in any way renouncing his own successes in civil and administrative law, he also became increasingly prominent in the interface between practical law work and the politics of the profession. Along with his involvement, after 1904, as a senator, he accepted membership of numerous advisory councils and public committees concerned with legal and educational institutions and their interactions with society more broadly, frequently taking a leading role.
Three years after his arrival at La Sapienza, Scialoja inaugurated the university's Institute of Roman Law, himself taking on the role of "institute secretary in perpetuity". Those invited to join included not just the Roman Law specialists, but also interested archaeologists and classical historians. Quite soon the Institute absorbed the Italian Society for the Increase of Romanistic Studies, a parallel but less dynamic organisation – some might have characterised it as a rival institution, which had been set up by (1855–1937) at Padua. Lando Landucci was a leading representative of the " school" of Roman Law, and had himself been a contender for the Rome professorship at the time of Scialoja's appointment. The incorporation of Landucci's organisation into the new institute could therefore be characterised as another blow against Serafini's followers. Directly after establishing the institute, in 1888, 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 Scialoja displayed an exceptional ability, not merely through his rare teaching talents, but also in his selection and training of young scholars. The extent to which his students subsequently achieved notability as leading legal academics meant that Scialoja's impact on the application and development of The Law in Italy was enduring and profound. Those whom he taught and/or powerfully influenced included Roman Law professors such as (1864-1932), Gino Segrè (1864–1942), Salvatore Riccobono (1864–1958), Carlo Longo (1869–1938), (1875-1957) and Vincenzo Arangio-Ruiz (1884-1964).
Civil law reform?