Lodovico Mortara

Born into a Jewish family as an Austrian citizen,[2] Lodovico was the son of Marco (Mordechai) Mortara, the senior rabbi of the community, and his wife Sara Castelfranco. After graduating in law from the University of Modena in 1874, he practised as a lawyer before embarking on an academic career. Beginning as a freelance lecturer in civil procedure in Bologna in 1882, he obtained the position of extraordinary professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Pisa in 1886 soon after he published, at the age of thirty, a pamphlet on the politics of law: The Modern State and Justice. He became a full professor there in 1888.[3][1][4][5]

His academic positions prompted him to write a number of teaching works, which went through several editions. These included the two volumes of his Manual of Civil Procedure (1887-8) and both the Principles of Civil Procedure and the Institutions of the Judicial System (1890). In 1892, together with Carlo Francesco Gabba he took over the direction of the magazine Giurisprudenza italiana, which he continued for forty-five years. In 1898 he moved to the Faculty of Law of Naples to take up the chair of civil procedure; in the same year he began publishing, in instalments, his commentary on the code and on the laws of civil procedure. Completed in 1909, the work extended to five volumes and was republished several times.[3][5]

In 1902, at the peak of his academic career, Mortara decided to leave academia to become a magistrate. He was general prosecutor in the Court of Appeal of Cagliari in 1905, first president in the Court of Appeal of Ancona in 1906, general prosecutor of the Court of Cassation of Palermo in 1909 and then of the Court of Cassation of Florence and that of Rome in 1911. Finally, he became First President of the Court of Cassation of Rome,[1] a position he held until to 1923, when the new fascist regime forced him into early retirement on the pretext of creating a single Supreme Court.[3][6]

As a magistrate, Mortara dealt with all sorts of controversies; for example, during his presidency of the Court of Appeal of Ancona in 1906, he upheld the right of ten women teachers from Senigallia to be registered on the electoral lists. He thought a lot about the right of women to be included in the political fabric, despite the prejudices of the time.[7] Later on, in a 1922 judgement, he affirmed the unconstitutionality of a decree of the Mussolini government.[6]

In 1910 he was appointed to the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and in 1919-1920 he served as minister of justice with the first Nitti government.[1] His parliamentary activity as a member of various ministerial commissions saw his involvement in various reforms, including :

• the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1913, the so-called "Finocchiaro Aprile" code, still in force today in the Vatican City. This included an institution he had already looked forward to in The Modern State and Justice, namely the criminal sentencing decree;[6]
• the 1919 repeal of marital authorization, whereby women had to ask the head of the family for authorization to appear in court and to dispose of assets (such as donating, mortgaging or selling real estate);[7]
• the Mortara Law, promulgated in 1919 to strengthen the ranks of the judiciary, whose members had been decimated by the First World War. It opened access to the judiciary to all law graduates who had been on the professional register for at least 5 years and/or had been practicing the profession of notary for the same time.[8]
• the law of 1922 which introduced the injunction into the Italian legal system

A Freemason, he was a member of the Grand Orient of Italy and, in 1920, of its Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite.[9]

In 1883 he married Clelia Vivanti, who was his companion for 28 years. They had two sons and three daughters: the eldest son Giorgio Mortara became an internationally renowned statistician and economist while one of his daughters, it:Nella Mortara, was a teacher of experimental physics.[6][2]

He died in Rome on 31 December 1936. He wanted to be buried in the Jewish cemetery of Mantua, next to his parents and wife, and did not want to be commemorated by the Senate of the fascist regime. No studies in his honour or in his memory were undertaken and his work seemed destined for oblivion until, over 30 years after his death in 1968, Salvatore Satta brought his work to wider attention. In 1997 the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei dedicated a 'Lincea day' to him.[6]

Istituzioni di procedura civile, 1922

• Lo Stato moderno e la giustizia (The Modern State and Justice). Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice. 1885.
• Istituzioni di ordinamento giudiziario (Judicial Institutions). Firenze: Barbera. 1906.
• Istituzioni di procedura civile (Institutions of Civil Procedure). Firenze: Barbera. 1922. (nuova edizione di Principii di procedura civile)