Abstract

A look at the Italian legal history's environment in the years immediately after World War II reveals a large panorama still dominated by professors who succeed in the fascist period next to the masters of the late nineteenth century. It was a framework of apparent continuity, except for some prudent purges, some embarrassed reinstatements, and some significant disappearances. In the transition from dictatorship to republic, the involvement of the law schools with the fascist regime was no less decisive than the post-Savignian tradition established in the teaching of legal history. In that context Francesco Calasso was the protagonist of a profound renewal of the scientific perspective and of the teaching of legal history, elaborating the concept of "ius commune" as a "spiritual fact".