CARUSI, EVARISTO. - Distinguished Roman-law scholar and Orientalist, consistorial advocate, born at Celano (Abruzzo) on 21 March 1866, died at Rome on 13 Apr. 1940.
A pupil of Vittorio Scialoja, he graduated in law in 1888 and made his debut the following year with a substantial and profound study, L'azione publiciana in diritto romano (Rome, 1889). He continued his studies of Roman law until 1907, when he devoted himself to the study of Muslim law and the legal systems of the Mediterranean East, engaging also in vigorous polemics with eminent Orientalist philologists (cf. above all his volume Diritto e filologia [Bologna, 1925]). He taught Roman law at the University of Innsbruck (1894), then at those of Perugia (1896) and Cagliari (1898).
In 1898 he relinquished teaching at the state universities in order to assume the chair of Roman law at the Pontifical Athenaeum of the Apollinare, now the Pontificium Institutum Utrisque Iuris. In 1920, by reason of his distinguished reputation, he was appointed full professor of the legal systems of the Mediterranean East at the University of Rome, where he also taught Muslim law and ius commune, until 1936, when he was retired on account of age limits. From 1931 he had resumed teaching ius commune at the Lateran Pontifical Athenaeum, a post he held until his death. Corrado Bernardini