ROCCO, ARTURO. - Jurist, b. in Naples on 26 Dec. 1876, d. in Rome on 1 Apr. 1942. He was professor of criminal law and of criminal procedure law at the Universities of Urbino (1900-1902), Ferrara (1902-1907), Cagliari (1907-1909), Sassari (1909-11), Siena (1911-16), Naples (1916-24), Milan (1924-29) and Rome (1929-42). Founder and director of the Scuola superiore di perfezionamento in diritto penale at the University of Rome; president of the Commission and member of the ministerial Committee for the drafting of the preliminary and the final project of the penal code.
R.'s chief merit is that he was the first in Italy to establish for the science of criminal law, beginning with the preliminary lecture to the course in criminal law and procedure delivered at the University of Sassari on 15 Jan. 1910, its essential physiognomy as a normative discipline; that is, one that analyzes the norms and principles of positive law. Probably this program remained more stated than translated into concrete results: following in the footsteps of German doctrine, R. in fact developed, in subsequent and larger works (above all in L'oggetto del reato), a conceptualism of pure German stamp, which justified, at least in part, the criticisms leveled at him by some of an only apparent liberation from the natural-law perspective. In any case his thought exercised for several decades a very notable influence on Italian criminal-law doctrine.
R.'s work as a legislator faithfully mirrors the motives of his work as a scholar, almost to the point of confounding them. Hence that constant preoccupation with "scientificity" which undoubtedly represents, together with the minute casuistry to which it led, one of the principal defects of the penal code now in force.
Principal works: Amnistia, indulto e grazia nel dir. pen. rom., Turin 1899; La riparazione alle vittime di errori giudiziari, Naples 1905; Tratt. della cosa giudicata come causa d'estinz. dell'azione penale, Modena 1909; Il problema e il metodo della scienza del d. pen., Milan 1910; L'oggetto del reato e della tutela giuridica penale, Turin
1913; Lezioni di dir. pen., Rome 1930-34; Le dottrine generali del dir. pen., ibid. 1934; Scienza ital. e scienza tedesca del dir. pen., Turin 1936.
Marcello Gallo