Ex cathedra. Lodovico Mortara, l'emancipazione femminile e la legge sulla capacità giuridica della donna

Law n. 1176 was issued by the Italian Parliament on 17th July 1919 to acknowledge the juridical capacity of women, by abolishing the legal arrangement of marital authorization and opening the door of the labour market for women. The bill had a long complicated path to follow before becoming law; however, it has been soon expunged from collective memory for being a halfway conquest and an announced change that never got real, considering the limitations and restrictions inherent to it. The law, which eventually came to meet the ambitions nurtured by Italian women for over half a century, is linked to the name of then Minister of Justice Lodovico Mortara, a lawyer, university teacher and First President of the Cassation Court of Rome. The purpose of this essay is to revisit the most relevant steps of Mortara’s public commitment to women’s liberation and highlight his leading role in the process of approval of the above-mentioned law.