The Legal Order

First published in 1917, with a second edition in 1948, this is the first English translation of Santi Romano's classic work, The Legal Order.

The main focus of The Legal Order is the notion of institution, which Romano considers to be both the core and distinguishing feature of law. After criticizing accounts of the nature of law centred on notions of rule, coercion, or authority, he offers a compelling account, not merely of law as an institution, but of the institution as "the first, original and essential manifestation of law". For Romano, any institution is a structure determined by those rules of organisation according to which individuals acquire an identity through the role they perform, and the rules they are required to follow in performing that role. Romano's notion of law thus leads to the definition of a legal institution as any group who share rules within a bounded context: for example, a family, a firm, a factory, a prison, an association, a church, an illegal organisation, a state, the community of states, and so on. The acme of a jurisprudential current long overlooked in the Anglophone environment (Romano's work is highly regarded in France, Germany, Spain and South America, as well as in Italy), The Legal Order not only proposes what Carl Schmitt described as a "very significant" theory of law. More importantly, it offers precious insights for a thorough rethinking of state-based models of law.