This book contains the first English translations of Santi Romano’s important essays, ‘On the Decree Laws and the State of Siege During the Earthquakes in Messina and Reggio Calabria’ (1909) and ‘The Modern State and its Crisis’ (1910).
Before Santi Romano wrote his masterpiece The Legal Order in 1917–18, he lay the foundations for his ground-breaking theory of law in these two essays, which are still central to scholarly debates about his legacy. The main focus of ‘On the Decree Laws’ is the concept of necessity as a source of law. Such a controversial view anticipated the...