WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.299 So imagine you are sitting at the head of this 00:00:03.299 --> 00:00:06.360 massive legal committee. It's 1920s Italy. Right, 00:00:06.419 --> 00:00:08.599 which is a pretty tense place to be. Yeah, incredibly 00:00:08.599 --> 00:00:12.480 tense. And a fascist dictator is basically demanding 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:15.080 that you completely rewrite the nation's civil 00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:18.820 code to give his government sweeping control 00:00:18.820 --> 00:00:21.039 over the population. Total control over everyday 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:24.640 life. Exactly. And if you flat out say no, well, 00:00:24.989 --> 00:00:28.010 you instantly become an enemy of a highly aggressive, 00:00:28.010 --> 00:00:30.269 violent state. Which is obviously not a great 00:00:30.269 --> 00:00:32.880 survival strategy. Not at all. But, like, if 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:35.619 you say yes, you're personally dismantling the 00:00:35.619 --> 00:00:37.359 justice system that you've literally spent your 00:00:37.359 --> 00:00:39.200 entire life building. So what do you do? It's 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:41.859 an impossible situation. It really is. But if 00:00:41.859 --> 00:00:44.119 you are Vitoria Schiologia, you do something 00:00:44.119 --> 00:00:47.700 absolutely brilliant. You basically bore them 00:00:47.700 --> 00:00:51.119 to death. Yeah, you weaponize the very structure 00:00:51.119 --> 00:00:54.820 of the bureaucracy to bring their grand political 00:00:54.820 --> 00:00:58.079 ambitions to this, like... grinding halt. I love 00:00:58.079 --> 00:01:00.259 it so much and that's exactly the mission for 00:01:00.259 --> 00:01:02.200 our deep dive into the source material today. 00:01:02.340 --> 00:01:04.560 We're going to trace exactly how he pulled that 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:06.459 off. Right, because we are pulling from these 00:01:06.459 --> 00:01:09.939 biographical excerpts that detail the life of 00:01:09.939 --> 00:01:13.280 Vittorio Siloia. He was an Italian jurist born 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:17.379 in 1856, died in 1933. And we're exploring how 00:01:17.379 --> 00:01:21.200 a completely self -taught you know, legal prodigy, 00:01:21.620 --> 00:01:24.359 a guy who accidentally sparked an actual student 00:01:24.359 --> 00:01:26.439 revolt. Which we'll definitely get into. Oh, 00:01:26.439 --> 00:01:29.540 we have to. How this guy eventually transformed 00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:32.700 into a propaganda minister, a drafter of the 00:01:32.700 --> 00:01:35.120 League of Nations Covenant, and as we said, this 00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:38.819 quiet saboteur of totalitarian legal reforms. 00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:41.180 It's quite the resume. OK, so let's unpack this. 00:01:41.180 --> 00:01:43.359 Because usually when you do a deep dive into 00:01:43.359 --> 00:01:46.620 a 19th century jurist, it guarantees like a super 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:49.519 dry list of dates and maybe a few black and white 00:01:49.519 --> 00:01:51.799 portraits of guys with impressive facial hair. 00:01:51.879 --> 00:01:54.379 Very impressive mustaches, usually. Right, but 00:01:54.379 --> 00:01:57.500 Cieloja's life, it actually reads like a playbook 00:01:57.500 --> 00:01:59.900 on how to master a system so thoroughly that 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:02.060 you can just rewrite the rules from the inside 00:02:02.060 --> 00:02:04.219 out. Yeah, he understood the machinery of the 00:02:04.219 --> 00:02:06.420 law better than anyone else. So let's start with 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:08.280 his childhood, because he didn't exactly grow 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:11.259 up in a normal, quiet, you know, typical household. 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:14.699 He's born in Turin, right? Yes, in Turin. But 00:02:14.699 --> 00:02:17.620 his father... Antonio Salogia was actually an 00:02:17.620 --> 00:02:20.560 exiled economist and politician from Naples. 00:02:21.139 --> 00:02:23.000 So politics was literally right there in the 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.460 living room from day one. Exactly. The environment 00:02:25.460 --> 00:02:27.919 he grew up in is just crucial to understanding 00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:30.500 his whole trajectory. I mean, Salogia was a kid 00:02:30.500 --> 00:02:32.740 sitting in a room filled with the heavy -hitting 00:02:32.740 --> 00:02:35.560 politicians and the real architects of a newly 00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:38.340 unified Italy. Just absorbing all of this statecraft 00:02:38.340 --> 00:02:41.270 before he could even... you know, drive a carriage. 00:02:41.669 --> 00:02:43.909 Right. He was surrounded by it. And one of those 00:02:43.909 --> 00:02:46.810 prominent politicians, a man named Pasquale Mancini, 00:02:47.289 --> 00:02:49.990 actually intervened in Cieloja's early life plans. 00:02:50.129 --> 00:02:52.729 Oh, really? What was he planning to do? Well, 00:02:52.830 --> 00:02:55.370 Cieloja originally intended to just join the 00:02:55.370 --> 00:02:57.330 judiciary. He wanted to become a working judge. 00:02:57.590 --> 00:03:00.430 OK. Sensible career path. Sensible, sure. But 00:03:00.430 --> 00:03:02.689 Mancini convinced the young man that his mind 00:03:02.689 --> 00:03:05.469 was just it was better suited for academia. Which 00:03:05.469 --> 00:03:07.909 turned out to be a massive understatement, honestly, 00:03:08.129 --> 00:03:10.310 though academia was absolutely not prepared for 00:03:10.310 --> 00:03:12.509 how this guy operated. No, not at all. So he 00:03:12.509 --> 00:03:15.689 gets his degree from Sapienza University in Rome 00:03:15.689 --> 00:03:19.889 in 1877. And at the time, the standard career 00:03:19.889 --> 00:03:22.530 path for a really promising legal scholar was 00:03:22.530 --> 00:03:25.780 to, like, immediately pack your bags and go on 00:03:25.780 --> 00:03:29.080 this grand postgraduate study tour at a prestigious 00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:30.979 German university. That was just what you did. 00:03:31.039 --> 00:03:33.819 It was the pipeline. Right. But C. Loggia skips 00:03:33.819 --> 00:03:35.819 it entirely. Completely ignores the tradition. 00:03:35.919 --> 00:03:38.520 Yeah. He just decides to be an autodidact. He's 00:03:38.520 --> 00:03:40.300 completely self -taught from that point forward. 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:43.340 The sources actually note he was entirely confident 00:03:43.340 --> 00:03:46.240 in his own, quote, intellectual rigor. What's 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:48.979 really fascinating here is how bypassing that 00:03:48.979 --> 00:03:52.539 traditional German academic pipeline fundamentally 00:03:52.539 --> 00:03:54.849 shaped his worldview. Because he wasn't brainwashed 00:03:54.849 --> 00:03:57.009 by the standard syllabus. Basically, yeah. He 00:03:57.009 --> 00:04:00.349 didn't inherit the rigid, boxed -in methodologies 00:04:00.349 --> 00:04:02.650 of the era's establishment. He just developed 00:04:02.650 --> 00:04:04.870 his own analytical frameworks. And it paid off 00:04:04.870 --> 00:04:07.909 incredibly fast, too. Oh, amazingly fast. By 00:04:07.909 --> 00:04:10.289 the time he was 23 years old, he was already 00:04:10.289 --> 00:04:12.330 appointed as a professor at the University of 00:04:12.330 --> 00:04:14.539 Camarino. Twenty three. I mean, I was barely 00:04:14.539 --> 00:04:17.000 managing to wake up before noon at twenty three. 00:04:17.160 --> 00:04:20.199 And this guy is delivering this heavy academic 00:04:20.199 --> 00:04:23.300 inaugural lecture titled Positive Law and Equity. 00:04:23.480 --> 00:04:25.600 OK, I want to test an analogy on you here just 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:28.100 to make sure I'm really grasping this foundational 00:04:28.100 --> 00:04:30.240 idea of his because it comes up a lot. Sure. 00:04:30.339 --> 00:04:34.399 Go for it. So is this conflict between positive 00:04:34.399 --> 00:04:38.899 law and equity basically the letter of the law 00:04:38.899 --> 00:04:41.240 versus the spirit of the law? That's a very good 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:43.720 way to frame it. Like playing a board game where 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:46.439 one person is completely obsessed with the literal 00:04:46.439 --> 00:04:48.759 text of the rule book and the other person keeps 00:04:48.759 --> 00:04:51.180 arguing about what actually feels fair for the 00:04:51.180 --> 00:04:53.420 group playing the game. That captures the core 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:56.079 tension perfectly, yeah. The physical rule book, 00:04:56.259 --> 00:04:59.120 in your analogy, is positive law. It's the written 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:01.399 statutes enacted by a government. The strict 00:05:01.399 --> 00:05:04.300 rules on the paper. Right. And the concept of 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:07.240 fair play or justice in a specific circumstance. 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:11.399 That's equity. Got it. So, Syloge's thesis was 00:05:11.399 --> 00:05:14.339 that the supposed war between these two concepts 00:05:14.339 --> 00:05:17.220 was heavily exaggerated by other scholars. Oh, 00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:19.540 he didn't think they were opposites? No, he argued 00:05:19.540 --> 00:05:23.420 that equity shouldn't just be... a judge's personal 00:05:23.420 --> 00:05:25.839 arbitrary feeling about what is fair in the heat 00:05:25.839 --> 00:05:28.180 of the moment. Because if a judge is just overturning 00:05:28.180 --> 00:05:30.879 the rulebook based on personal feelings, that 00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:33.279 creates total chaos. Exactly. Because then you 00:05:33.279 --> 00:05:34.879 aren't playing a game anymore. You're just at 00:05:34.879 --> 00:05:37.399 the mercy of whoever happens to be moderating 00:05:37.399 --> 00:05:39.300 the game that day. Right. They just make it up 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:42.980 as they go. Precisely the danger he saw. Skiolozsa 00:05:42.980 --> 00:05:45.120 believed that if equity is going to actually 00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:48.899 mean anything real, it has to be rigorously translated 00:05:48.899 --> 00:05:51.720 into binding legal provisions. You have to literally 00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:54.019 write the fairness into the rulebook itself. 00:05:54.180 --> 00:05:57.959 You do. And this early philosophy that the law 00:05:57.959 --> 00:06:00.660 absolutely must protect society from arbitrary 00:06:00.660 --> 00:06:03.740 whims even well -meaning ones, that became the 00:06:03.740 --> 00:06:05.819 defensive posture he carried his entire life. 00:06:05.899 --> 00:06:08.040 Which honestly brings us to the most ironic moment 00:06:08.040 --> 00:06:10.040 of his early career. Oh, the Siena situation. 00:06:10.279 --> 00:06:13.600 Yes, because he believes in this rigorous structure, 00:06:13.920 --> 00:06:16.319 but his teaching methods are so unorthodox that 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:19.240 they cause utter chaos. Complete chaos. So in 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:21.980 1880, he moves to teach at the University of 00:06:21.980 --> 00:06:24.600 Siena, and the local students there, they are 00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:27.439 used to a very conventional, standard -issue 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:31.100 local professor, a guy named Luigi Moriani. traditional 00:06:31.100 --> 00:06:34.379 guy. Very. And then Silosius shows up and he 00:06:34.379 --> 00:06:37.139 just refuses to teach the basic syllabus. He 00:06:37.139 --> 00:06:40.240 wants them to deeply analyze the structural underpinnings 00:06:40.240 --> 00:06:42.860 of the law, not just memorize a bunch of answers 00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:45.639 for a test. The tension in those classrooms must 00:06:45.639 --> 00:06:47.620 have been extraordinary. I mean, the students 00:06:47.620 --> 00:06:50.379 were so frustrated by his analytical demanding 00:06:50.379 --> 00:06:53.420 style because it reached way beyond what they 00:06:53.420 --> 00:06:55.240 considered the traditional bounds of the course. 00:06:55.300 --> 00:06:58.199 They just wanted the easy A. Basically. And it 00:06:58.199 --> 00:07:01.259 escalated into an actual student revolt in May 00:07:01.259 --> 00:07:05.160 of 1881. A literal mob of students. Yes. The 00:07:05.160 --> 00:07:08.500 situation deteriorated so badly that the university's 00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:10.879 academic council suspended Cieloja's lectures 00:07:10.879 --> 00:07:14.019 entirely just to appease the angry mob. I love 00:07:14.019 --> 00:07:15.959 that so much. A professor gets suspended for 00:07:15.959 --> 00:07:18.100 teaching too hard. It's pretty rare. It actually 00:07:18.100 --> 00:07:20.519 took Greta Bocelli, who was the actual Minister 00:07:20.519 --> 00:07:23.180 of Education down in Rome, intervening to get 00:07:23.180 --> 00:07:25.019 those lectures reinstated. Right, he had to step 00:07:25.019 --> 00:07:27.279 in. So the obvious question here for anyone listening 00:07:27.279 --> 00:07:30.660 is... How does a guy who literally gets shut 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:33.620 down by his own students end up conquering the 00:07:33.620 --> 00:07:36.240 entire academic legal universe in Italy? Well, 00:07:36.240 --> 00:07:38.759 he applies his structural brilliance to the academic 00:07:38.759 --> 00:07:41.720 game itself. So after four years in Siena, he 00:07:41.720 --> 00:07:43.879 makes a very strategic move to the capital. Going 00:07:43.879 --> 00:07:47.240 right to the center of power. Exactly. In 1884, 00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:50.199 he arrives at La Sapienza in Rome. And to get 00:07:50.199 --> 00:07:52.540 that professorship, he had to beat out the highly 00:07:52.540 --> 00:07:55.500 respected pupils of Filippo Serafini. And Serafini 00:07:55.500 --> 00:07:58.490 was like... a giant in the field of Roman law 00:07:58.490 --> 00:08:01.269 at the time, right? The massive figure. But Ceolosia 00:08:01.269 --> 00:08:03.490 didn't just quietly take the job and settle in. 00:08:03.889 --> 00:08:06.209 He immediately began building this institutional 00:08:06.209 --> 00:08:08.569 empire. Yeah, he founds the Institute of Roman 00:08:08.569 --> 00:08:11.779 Law at the university. But there's a rival organization 00:08:11.779 --> 00:08:14.060 operating up in Padua run by a scholar named 00:08:14.060 --> 00:08:16.560 Lando Landucci. And Landucci was part of that 00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:19.060 same Serafini school that Cieloja had just defeated 00:08:19.060 --> 00:08:21.720 for the Rome professorship. Right. So Cieloja's 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:24.079 solution isn't to fiercely compete with Landucci. 00:08:24.579 --> 00:08:27.720 He just he absorbs Landucci's entire organization 00:08:27.720 --> 00:08:30.560 into his own in Rome. It's a textbook example 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:34.559 of institutional consolidation. I mean. By absorbing 00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:37.820 the Padua group, he basically centralized the 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:40.679 entire academic discipline of Roman law under 00:08:40.679 --> 00:08:43.700 his own personal leadership. Power move. A huge 00:08:43.700 --> 00:08:47.360 power move. And to solidify that monopoly, in 00:08:47.360 --> 00:08:50.879 1888, he launched an academic journal, the Bullettino 00:08:50.879 --> 00:08:53.480 dell 'Istituto di Diritto Romano. And the structural 00:08:53.480 --> 00:08:56.179 foundation he built for that was so robust that 00:08:56.179 --> 00:08:58.539 this journal is still being published today, 00:08:58.840 --> 00:09:01.460 well over a century later. It really is a testament 00:09:01.460 --> 00:09:03.779 to his organizing skills. OK, but I have to pause 00:09:03.779 --> 00:09:06.320 here and ask a question on behalf of you listening, 00:09:06.419 --> 00:09:08.500 because this is where the whole premise feels 00:09:08.500 --> 00:09:10.679 just a little bit counterintuitive to me. How 00:09:10.679 --> 00:09:13.700 so? Well, Cieloje dedicates his entire existence 00:09:13.700 --> 00:09:16.590 to Roman law. But he even writes this famous 00:09:16.590 --> 00:09:18.929 letter stating, quote, we do not need to be under 00:09:18.929 --> 00:09:21.549 any delusions. Pure Roman law is dead. Right. 00:09:21.590 --> 00:09:23.549 He knew it was dead. But then he follows that 00:09:23.549 --> 00:09:25.809 up by claiming its deadness actually increases 00:09:25.809 --> 00:09:29.149 its importance as a topic of study. Why dedicate 00:09:29.149 --> 00:09:31.610 your life to mastering a dead law? Like, that 00:09:31.610 --> 00:09:33.590 feels like dedicating your life to studying the 00:09:33.590 --> 00:09:36.029 mechanics of floppy disks. Why does it matter 00:09:36.029 --> 00:09:38.769 to anyone outside of a dusty archive? It's a 00:09:38.769 --> 00:09:40.889 great question. And if we connect this to the 00:09:40.889 --> 00:09:44.389 bigger picture. Studying dead Roman law wasn't 00:09:44.389 --> 00:09:46.870 an exercise in nostalgia for scelosia at all. 00:09:47.070 --> 00:09:49.750 It was an exercise in understanding the underlying 00:09:49.750 --> 00:09:53.549 DNA of modern legal structures. Okay, the DNA. 00:09:53.669 --> 00:09:55.830 Yeah, let's use your floppy disk analogy. If 00:09:55.830 --> 00:09:57.769 you only memorize how to click the buttons on 00:09:57.769 --> 00:10:00.370 a specific piece of software, your knowledge 00:10:00.370 --> 00:10:02.990 is totally useless the exact moment that software 00:10:02.990 --> 00:10:04.950 updates. Right, because you're just blindly following 00:10:04.950 --> 00:10:06.570 a user manual. You don't know how it actually 00:10:06.570 --> 00:10:09.490 works. Exactly. But if you understand the fundamental 00:10:09.490 --> 00:10:12.289 binary code, the deep architecture of how a machine 00:10:12.289 --> 00:10:15.049 processes information, you can adapt to any system, 00:10:15.409 --> 00:10:17.309 no matter how much the user interface changes. 00:10:17.470 --> 00:10:20.690 Oh, wow. Okay, I see. Roman law is the architectural 00:10:20.690 --> 00:10:23.190 blueprint for almost all Western European civil 00:10:23.190 --> 00:10:26.580 law. Skeloja wasn't teaching his elite students 00:10:26.580 --> 00:10:29.639 luminaries like Pietro Bonfonte and Vincenzo 00:10:29.639 --> 00:10:32.539 Orangio -Ruiz. He wasn't teaching them to memorize 00:10:32.539 --> 00:10:35.059 dead rules about ancient aqueducts. Right. He 00:10:35.059 --> 00:10:38.120 was teaching them how systems of human governance 00:10:38.120 --> 00:10:40.279 are constructed from the ground up. Yes. He's 00:10:40.279 --> 00:10:42.200 teaching them to see the matrix. Man, when you 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:44.340 understand the code behind the everyday rules, 00:10:44.500 --> 00:10:47.399 you understand how to manipulate, improve, or 00:10:47.399 --> 00:10:51.000 defend the entire system. And knowing the structural 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:54.519 DNA of a nation's law becomes incredibly vital 00:10:54.519 --> 00:10:57.960 when a new political regime attempts to mutate 00:10:57.960 --> 00:11:01.080 that DNA to serve its own authoritarian goals. 00:11:01.370 --> 00:11:03.950 Which brings us to the 1920s. And here's where 00:11:03.950 --> 00:11:06.289 it gets really interesting. Because as we look 00:11:06.289 --> 00:11:08.929 at the source texts concerning this period, we 00:11:08.929 --> 00:11:11.529 are stepping into a highly charged historical 00:11:11.529 --> 00:11:14.590 era, which is the rise of Mussolini's fascism 00:11:14.590 --> 00:11:16.889 in Italy. Right. And I need to just pause and 00:11:16.889 --> 00:11:19.110 say, just to be totally clear to you listening, 00:11:19.690 --> 00:11:22.049 our goal here is not to take political sides 00:11:22.049 --> 00:11:24.750 or to endorse any of the ideological viewpoints 00:11:24.750 --> 00:11:27.110 present in these historical documents. We are 00:11:27.110 --> 00:11:29.669 remaining strictly neutral. Absolutely. We are 00:11:29.669 --> 00:11:31.389 simply unpacking the history. historical facts 00:11:31.389 --> 00:11:33.950 of how Scialogia navigated this ideological clash 00:11:33.950 --> 00:11:36.669 exactly as the sources describe it. Exactly. 00:11:37.470 --> 00:11:39.610 So setting the historical stage is crucial here. 00:11:40.070 --> 00:11:43.250 In 1924, Scialogia is appointed as the president 00:11:43.250 --> 00:11:46.169 of a sub -commission tasked with revising Italy's 00:11:46.169 --> 00:11:49.269 1865 civil code. And the political atmosphere 00:11:49.269 --> 00:11:51.269 surrounding this committee was just incredibly 00:11:51.269 --> 00:11:54.769 dark. The Mediote assassination had just horrified 00:11:54.769 --> 00:11:56.830 the Italian establishment. And we should clarify 00:11:56.830 --> 00:11:59.700 that. For anyone unfamiliar, Giacomo Mattiotti 00:11:59.700 --> 00:12:02.740 was a prominent political rival who was kidnapped 00:12:02.740 --> 00:12:05.720 and murdered by fascist thugs. It was a massive 00:12:05.720 --> 00:12:07.919 wake up call for the country. It really was the 00:12:07.919 --> 00:12:10.639 moment the illusion of standard political friction 00:12:10.639 --> 00:12:14.120 dropped and the country realized the true violent 00:12:14.120 --> 00:12:16.799 stakes of Mussolini's regime. The government 00:12:16.799 --> 00:12:19.899 is actively pushing these totalitarian and corporatist 00:12:19.899 --> 00:12:22.139 principles. And those principles are vital to 00:12:22.139 --> 00:12:25.159 define. The regime's goal with corporatism was 00:12:25.159 --> 00:12:27.519 basically to subordinate individual civil rights 00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:30.100 to state -controlled economic groups. Basically 00:12:30.100 --> 00:12:32.659 making you just a cog in the state's economic 00:12:32.659 --> 00:12:35.379 machine. Exactly. While totalitarianism meant 00:12:35.379 --> 00:12:37.460 the government sought total absolute authority 00:12:37.460 --> 00:12:39.679 over every aspect of public and private life. 00:12:39.980 --> 00:12:42.320 Mussolini wanted to infiltrate the very fabric 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:46.159 of society. He did. And redefining private law 00:12:46.159 --> 00:12:48.799 through the Civil Code was a prime opportunity 00:12:48.799 --> 00:12:52.309 to do that. And there is Skyloya. sitting at 00:12:52.309 --> 00:12:53.750 the head of the committees supposed to write 00:12:53.750 --> 00:12:56.429 these new rules. Right, but his lifelong belief 00:12:56.429 --> 00:12:58.470 was that the justice system had to be separated 00:12:58.470 --> 00:13:00.970 from politics. He wanted to stop the government 00:13:00.970 --> 00:13:03.570 from intensifying its control over individuals' 00:13:03.990 --> 00:13:06.590 lives. But he's just one man. Exactly. How does 00:13:06.590 --> 00:13:09.950 a single law professor stop an entire regime's 00:13:09.950 --> 00:13:12.659 legislative agenda? Because he can't just loudly 00:13:12.659 --> 00:13:14.779 refuse. That gets you removed from the committee 00:13:14.779 --> 00:13:17.860 or, you know, much worse. Right. Well, he realized 00:13:17.860 --> 00:13:20.940 that in a time of extreme institutional fragility, 00:13:21.279 --> 00:13:23.820 surrounded by these powerful disintegrating forces, 00:13:24.299 --> 00:13:26.740 the best defense against authoritarian infiltration 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:30.240 was simply preserving the existing 1865 code. 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:32.419 Just keep the old rules. Yeah, because a sweeping 00:13:32.419 --> 00:13:34.419 reform would open the door for the regime to 00:13:34.419 --> 00:13:36.600 rewrite the foundational rules of daily life. 00:13:37.399 --> 00:13:39.860 So, silo distalled. I love this strategy so much. 00:13:40.100 --> 00:13:43.059 It's essentially a legislative DDAL attack. Like 00:13:43.059 --> 00:13:46.220 a distributed denial of service attack. It's 00:13:46.220 --> 00:13:48.740 when hackers flood a computer server with so 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:51.519 many tiny bogus requests that the whole system 00:13:51.519 --> 00:13:53.580 just gets bogged down and crashes. Oh, I see. 00:13:53.679 --> 00:13:56.750 Yes, that is a perfect analogy. Cieloja just 00:13:56.750 --> 00:13:59.570 flooded the reform process with his massive intellect. 00:13:59.769 --> 00:14:01.730 I can just picture him in these tense committee 00:14:01.730 --> 00:14:05.590 meetings playing the pedantic elder statesman, 00:14:05.850 --> 00:14:07.990 insisting they spend like three weeks debating 00:14:07.990 --> 00:14:10.330 the translation of a single Latin prefix before 00:14:10.330 --> 00:14:12.549 they can even move on to the next sentence. And 00:14:12.549 --> 00:14:15.190 his deep architectural knowledge of the law allowed 00:14:15.190 --> 00:14:18.389 him to bog down the process with absolute credibility. 00:14:18.779 --> 00:14:21.720 I mean, nobody could out argue him on the minutiae 00:14:21.720 --> 00:14:23.379 of legal history. Right, because he wrote the 00:14:23.379 --> 00:14:26.100 book on it. Exactly. And he frustrated the regime's 00:14:26.100 --> 00:14:29.080 ambitions immensely. The fascist foreign minister, 00:14:29.240 --> 00:14:32.860 Dino Grandi, actually openly reproached Cieloja 00:14:32.860 --> 00:14:35.820 for what he called his incorrigible skepticism. 00:14:36.259 --> 00:14:38.320 Incorrigible skepticism? That is such a polite 00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:40.480 way of saying this guy is driving us crazy. It 00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:43.580 really is. Cieloja used the sheer density and 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:46.379 complexity of the legal system as a shield against 00:14:46.379 --> 00:14:49.159 political overreach. But this raises a massive 00:14:49.159 --> 00:14:51.879 question. You don't just cross a dictatorial 00:14:51.879 --> 00:14:55.080 regime, stall their flagship legal reforms, and 00:14:55.080 --> 00:14:57.940 survive unless you are practically untouchable. 00:14:58.139 --> 00:15:01.120 That's true. So to understand how he had the 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:04.320 armor to defy the regime in 1924, we have to 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:06.720 rewind a couple of decades and look at the empire 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:09.720 he was building outside the classroom. How did 00:15:09.720 --> 00:15:12.360 a law professor get so much international clout? 00:15:12.580 --> 00:15:16.019 Because he was simultaneously building this staggering 00:15:16.019 --> 00:15:18.639 parallel career in high stakes national and global 00:15:18.639 --> 00:15:21.320 politics. He wasn't just an academic, you know, 00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:23.580 he was an indispensable political operator. Let's 00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:25.480 look at his trajectory leading up to that moment, 00:15:25.519 --> 00:15:28.299 because it's wild. In 1904, he's made a senator 00:15:28.299 --> 00:15:31.000 for life in Italy. The huge honor. Huge. And 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:33.019 at the exact same time, he is serving as the 00:15:33.019 --> 00:15:35.559 mayor of Presida. Which is such a contrast. It 00:15:35.559 --> 00:15:38.580 really is. Presida is this tiny, stunningly beautiful 00:15:38.580 --> 00:15:41.019 island in the Bay of Naples, which was his family's 00:15:41.019 --> 00:15:43.879 ancestral home. The juxtaposition of his life 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:47.360 is wild to me. He is a life senator in the Capitol, 00:15:47.559 --> 00:15:50.500 an elite legal scholar, and he's managing local 00:15:50.500 --> 00:15:55.259 island politics. Then, in 1909 and 1910, he briefly 00:15:55.259 --> 00:15:57.980 steps up to serve as Italy's Minister of Justice 00:15:57.980 --> 00:16:01.440 for 110 days. And his influence only expands 00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:04.399 when World War I breaks out. He becomes a powerful 00:16:04.399 --> 00:16:06.960 advocate for Italy entering the war right during 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:09.860 the conflict specifically around 1916 and 1917 00:16:09.860 --> 00:16:13.080 he serves as a Minister without portfolio which 00:16:13.080 --> 00:16:14.980 I mean that title sounds like a bureaucratic 00:16:14.980 --> 00:16:17.799 benchwarmer. It does sound like a fake job But 00:16:17.799 --> 00:16:20.100 historians reveal that he was essentially operating 00:16:20.100 --> 00:16:23.159 as Italy's first minister propaganda and the 00:16:23.159 --> 00:16:26.480 press abroad. Okay, wait a Roman law expert running 00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:29.139 a wartime propaganda machine. Yeah. Initially, 00:16:29.159 --> 00:16:31.320 that sounds like a total mismatch. But if you 00:16:31.320 --> 00:16:33.799 think about what a brilliant legal mind actually 00:16:33.799 --> 00:16:37.159 does, it makes perfect sense. How so? Well, a 00:16:37.159 --> 00:16:39.700 top tier jurist knows exactly how to frame a 00:16:39.700 --> 00:16:42.259 narrative, right? They know how to find the loopholes 00:16:42.259 --> 00:16:44.700 in an opponent's argument and present a bulletproof 00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:47.320 case to a jury. That's very true. In this scenario, 00:16:47.460 --> 00:16:49.340 the jury is just the international community. 00:16:49.799 --> 00:16:52.600 Exactly. He understood persuasion on a purely 00:16:52.600 --> 00:16:55.379 structural level. He had the deep intellectual 00:16:55.379 --> 00:16:58.639 rigor to project Italy's arguments, using the 00:16:58.639 --> 00:17:00.940 language of international law and historical 00:17:00.940 --> 00:17:04.039 rights, onto the global stage. Wow. And that 00:17:04.039 --> 00:17:07.039 wartime role seamlessly transitioned into his 00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:10.359 post -war career, which is arguably his most 00:17:10.359 --> 00:17:13.480 globally influential period. Yeah, because after 00:17:13.480 --> 00:17:16.039 the war ends, he is sent to the Versailles Peace 00:17:16.039 --> 00:17:18.019 Conference as part of the Italian delegation. 00:17:18.500 --> 00:17:20.319 He serves as the Minister of Foreign Affairs 00:17:20.319 --> 00:17:23.299 from 1919 to 1920. Our critical time. And then 00:17:23.299 --> 00:17:27.119 from 1921 all the way to 1932, he is Italy's 00:17:27.119 --> 00:17:29.259 principal delegate to the League of Nations in 00:17:29.259 --> 00:17:32.339 Geneva. He actually helped draft the League's 00:17:32.339 --> 00:17:34.480 covenant. It's incredible. This Otto Didact, 00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:36.519 who refused to go to grad school in Germany, 00:17:36.859 --> 00:17:39.299 ends up drafting the operating manual for global 00:17:39.299 --> 00:17:42.359 geopolitics. If we synthesize all of these distinct 00:17:42.359 --> 00:17:44.460 chapters, you know, the student revolt, the dead 00:17:44.460 --> 00:17:46.759 Roman laws, the quiet sabotage of the fascists, 00:17:46.759 --> 00:17:49.960 the League of Nations, a very clear, powerful 00:17:49.960 --> 00:17:53.140 pattern emerges. What's the pattern? was never 00:17:53.140 --> 00:17:56.259 just a theorist locked away in a dusty archive. 00:17:57.039 --> 00:18:00.180 He took a rigorously trained mind. a mind that 00:18:00.180 --> 00:18:02.319 understood the fundamental DNA of how humans 00:18:02.319 --> 00:18:05.039 make agreements. And he applied it to the most 00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:07.799 volatile, real -world situations imaginable. 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:10.019 Because he understood that the text of a treaty 00:18:10.019 --> 00:18:12.759 in Geneva, or the text of a civil code in Rome, 00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:16.019 eventually dictates the reality of millions of 00:18:16.019 --> 00:18:18.500 everyday lives. Exactly. It all circles back 00:18:18.500 --> 00:18:21.079 to that inaugural lecture he gave at 23 about 00:18:21.079 --> 00:18:23.740 the board game rule book. Oh, right. Positive 00:18:23.740 --> 00:18:26.839 law and equity. Yes. You have to write the fairness, 00:18:27.240 --> 00:18:29.950 the equity, into the actual rules, whether those 00:18:29.950 --> 00:18:32.490 rules govern a province in ancient Rome, the 00:18:32.490 --> 00:18:34.470 redrawn borders of post -World War I Europe, 00:18:34.890 --> 00:18:37.009 or the civil rights of Italian citizens living 00:18:37.009 --> 00:18:39.529 under the shadow of a dictatorship in the 1920s. 00:18:39.869 --> 00:18:42.670 He saw the unbroken through line of human justice 00:18:42.670 --> 00:18:45.009 stretching from antiquity straight into modernity 00:18:45.009 --> 00:18:47.950 and he utilized every single tool he had to protect 00:18:47.950 --> 00:18:50.269 it. He really did. So what does this all mean 00:18:50.269 --> 00:18:52.730 for you listening right now? Why does a guy who 00:18:52.730 --> 00:18:55.809 died in 1933 matter for your life today? It's 00:18:55.809 --> 00:18:57.950 the million dollar question. I think C. Loggia 00:18:57.950 --> 00:19:00.849 is the ultimate proof that being self -taught, 00:19:01.130 --> 00:19:03.650 having the quiet confidence to think outside 00:19:03.650 --> 00:19:06.069 the traditional syllabus and build your own frameworks 00:19:06.069 --> 00:19:09.549 can give you a massive edge in any field. Absolutely. 00:19:09.869 --> 00:19:13.519 He proves that deep foundational knowledge even 00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:16.059 in something that seems as obscure and irrelevant 00:19:16.059 --> 00:19:19.240 as Roman law isn't just cocktail party trivia. 00:19:19.500 --> 00:19:22.140 It provides you with structural armor, structural 00:19:22.140 --> 00:19:24.599 armor. I like that. Yeah, it gives you the blueprint 00:19:24.599 --> 00:19:27.039 to stand your ground when the pressure is immense, 00:19:27.460 --> 00:19:29.640 whether you are defending a project in a corporate 00:19:29.640 --> 00:19:32.339 boardroom, holding your own in a rigorous classroom 00:19:32.339 --> 00:19:35.880 or quietly pushing back against a sweeping political 00:19:35.880 --> 00:19:38.579 tide. That is an incredibly practical takeaway. 00:19:38.940 --> 00:19:41.339 And, you know, it leaves us with one final provocative 00:19:41.339 --> 00:19:43.680 thought to consider. based on the sources we've 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:46.200 explored today. Oh, lay it on me. Cieloja famously 00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:49.440 declared that Roman law was dead, right? Yet 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.660 he proved with every single phase of his career 00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:53.940 that it was the living, breathing foundation 00:19:53.940 --> 00:19:56.339 of modern justice. Yeah, he brought it to life. 00:19:56.539 --> 00:19:59.819 So if legal systems are in fact living, evolving 00:19:59.819 --> 00:20:02.859 organisms that eventually die only to birth new 00:20:02.859 --> 00:20:05.720 frameworks, what aspects of our modern everyday 00:20:05.720 --> 00:20:08.680 laws will one day be studied as the dead foundations 00:20:08.680 --> 00:20:11.640 of the societies of the future? Oh man, that 00:20:11.640 --> 00:20:13.980 is definitely something to chew on. From a dusty 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:16.339 Wikipedia page to the blueprint of the future, 00:20:16.640 --> 00:20:18.619 the archives are never as quiet as they seem.