Italian Codes Today: Signs of Crisis
In Italy the last triumph of the idea of codification was celebrated during the twenty years of the fascist regime. The leading proponent of the movement was a skilled jurist, Alfredo Rocco, who, in the ministerial post of Keeper of the Seal, launched the last season of the Italian codes.
Rocco considered the problem of codification to be an important element in his overall vision of society and the fascist state; to quote Alberto Aquarone, it played a decisive part in the “organization of the totalitarian state.”[32] The Codiee Penale was issued in 1930, at the same time as the Codiee di Proeedura Penale. Although as minister Rocco ranked well below King Victor Emmanuel III and President of the Council Benito Mussolini, the penal code is (quite properly) known as the ccCodice Rocco.” It supported the fascist doctrine of the state in two important ways : first, it presented the idea of an organic “code” as the expression of the social predominance of one class—the bourgeoisie—in the authoritarian and absolutist interpretation that dictatorship gave of the interests of that class; second, it provided an opportunity to translate the absolutist politics of dictatorship into specific articles of law.The fascist regime put continuous and intense efforts into codification, which bore fruit in only a few years. The Codice di Procedure Civile was approved in 1940 and came into force in 1942. The Codice Civile^ begun in 1938, was promulgated on its completion in 1942, when it replaced the civil code of 1865, absorbing and canceling the old Codice di Commercio of 1883. These were the last Aickerings of the codification movement.
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