The Formation of International Law Journals in ItalyTheir Role in the Discipline

Abstract

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.