CARUSI, EVARISTO. - Distinguished Romanist and Orientalist, consistorial advocate, b. at Celano (Abruzzo) on 21 March 1866, d. at Rome on 13 April 1940.
A disciple of Vittorio Scialoja, he graduated in jurisprudence in 1888 and made his debut the following year with a broad and profound study on L'azione publiciana in diritto romano (Rome 1889). He continued his studies of Roman law until the year 1907, when he devoted himself to the study of Muslim law and the Mediterranean Oriental laws, also engaging in lively polemics with distinguished Orientalist philologists (cf. especially his volume Diritto e filologia [Bologna 1925]). He taught Roman law at the University of Innsbruck (1894), then at those of Perugia (1896), and of Cagliari (1898).
He gave up teaching in the state universities in 1898 in order to assume the chair of Roman law at the Pontifical Athenaeum of the Apollinare, the present Pontificium Institutum Utrisque Iuris. In 1920 he was, by clear fame, appointed full professor of Mediterranean Oriental laws at the University of Rome, where he also taught Muslim law and common law, until 1936, when he was retired on account of the age limit. From 1931 he had resumed at the Pontifical Lateran Athenaeum the teaching of common law, which he held until his death.
Corrado Bernardini