MANCINI, PASQUALE STANISLAO. — Jurist and politician, born on 17 March 1817 at Castel Baronia (Avellino), died in Rome on 26 December 1888. Having completed his studies at the University of Naples, he soon became a professor there. After serving as a deputy in the Neapolitan Parliament (1848), he was forced for political reasons to flee to Turin, where (1850) the chair of public external and private international law was established expressly for him. In 1872 he transferred to the University of Rome.
A deputy in the Parliament, first of Subalpine Italy and then of the nation, continuously from 1860, he became its leader of the centre-left. He was councillor to the Lieutenant Governor in the liberated Neapolitan provinces (1861) and several times a minister (of Public Instruction in the Rattazzi cabinet [1862], of Justice under Depretis [from 1876 to 1878], and of Foreign Affairs, again under Depretis [from 1881 to 1885], in which capacity he concluded the first treaty of the Triple Alliance [1882]). Tutor to King Umberto I, he was awarded the dignities of minister of State and knight of the Civil Order of Savoy. He was among the founders of the Institute of International Law of Ghent, of which he also served as president.
M. is known above all as the proponent of the “principle of nationality,” which he formulated scientifically in his Turin inaugural lecture of 1851 (La nazionalità come fonte del diritto delle genti). This resounded as a challenge to foreign domination in Italy and provoked protests from Austria and the Kingdom of Naples before the court of Turin.
In the field of ecclesiastical policy, as heir to the Neapolitan jurisdictionalist tradition, he defended its principles throughout his political career, especially on the occasion of the law concerning the liquidation of ecclesiastical Law of Guarantees (v.). He therefore repeatedly denied bishops the right to leave their sees without the consent of the governmental authority; he asserted—in open opposition to the doctrine of the Church—that there was “a single power, that of national sovereignty, and therefore a single law and a single universal, unlimited jurisdiction”; he upheld the legitimacy of the exequatur (v.) and the placet. It is also worth recalling, however, that it was M. himself who advised St Giovanni Bosco never to seek recognition of the legal personality of the Salesian Society he had founded, in order to shield it from any danger of the confiscation of ecclesiastical property.
Among his works, the following should be recalled: Intorno alla filosofia del diritto e singolarmente intorno alle origini del diritto di punire (letters by T. Mamiani and P. S. M., Florence 1846, Livorno 1875); Sommi lineamenti di una storia ideale della penalità (Rome 1874); Della vocazione del nostro secolo per la riforma e la codificazione del diritto delle genti e per l'ordinamento di una giustizia internazionale (ibid. 1874). His Saggi sulla nazionalità were republished recently (Rome 1944, edited by F. Lopez de Oñate); his parliamentary speeches were collected in three volumes (Rome 1893–97).