On colonization and legal thought. An approach to Santi Romano's Corso di diritto coloniale/Ancora in tema di cultura giuridica e colonizzazione. Prime note sul Corso di diritto coloniale di Santi Romano

This essay is aimed at reconsidering the relationship between colonial experience and legal culture, moving from an analysis of Santi Romano's Corso di diritto coloniale. Romano's Course on one hand confirms the importance of the role played by the legal discipline in legitimizing and organizing Italian colonialism in the twentieth century, and on the other hand it shows how his thoughts on colonial issues did constitute an important part of Romano's intellectual path between the late nineteenth century and the end of the First World War. In this perspective, the little attention paid by many studies dedicated to this author to the colonial law component of his discourse, confirms that jurists have discarded the colonial experience from their field of research; whereas Romano's re flections indeed confirm that colonial law did constitute a relevant component of the debate among jurists during the first half of the twentieth century--a debate which can still provide very interesting inputs for today's scholars in public law.