Michael A. Livingston, a professor of taxation law at the Rutgers School of Law–Camden, has written an excellent study of Fascist Italy's anti-Semitic laws and their application. Both the focus and the approach of the work are unique. Unlike most works on Jews and Fascism, which focus more on the political and social history of Fascist racial policy, Livingston's book carefully examines how racial legislation was interpreted and implemented by the Italian state. Throughout the work, Livingston argues against the idea of Italians being essentially “good people” (brava gente) and overturns commonly held assumptions about Italy's race laws. In both scholarly and popular accounts, the Fascist anti-Semitic laws have often been depicted as “soft” and unevenly implemented. For example, their stated purpose was ostensibly to “discriminate” and not to “persecute.” Moreover, Jews who had provided special service—mainly military—to the state or to Fascism could request discriminato (exempt) status, exempting them from some provisions. Finally, true or not, the commonly held assumption that Italians have a propensity for flouting state authority has led some commentators to conclude that state officials did not always apply the laws rigorously. Livingston argues against all of these notions, demonstrating, by contrast, that the laws were specially tailored to the Italian state and society, thereby greatly enhancing their scope and impact. For example, Livingston notes how granting Jews discriminato status, “a seemingly generous provision,” actually strengthened the racial policy in the long run (63). While restrictions on military service and business and real-estate ownership were lifted for those with discriminato status, the prohibitions on mixed marriages, school attendance, and employment in public entities remained. Moreover, this partial exemption from the racial laws was nontransferable to the next generation, making it ultimately temporary. In sum, exempting some Jews made the success of the race laws more likely “by dividing the Jewish community and by avoiding the negative publicity that might have resulted if (for example) a noted war hero had been forced to sell his property the first year following adoption of the laws” (65).
Livingston carries this argument—that seemingly “soft” or “weak” aspects of the laws were actually important to successful implementation—through the book. Early on he argues that the race laws were characterized by a “creative ambiguity,” leaving courts and administrators “to resolve these issues in a number of different ways,” and that such decisions proved “an important test of attitudes toward the Race Laws” (52). Demorazza, the agency with primary responsibility for the racial laws, applied them most harshly, while other agencies, such as the Finance Ministry, tended to be more “lenient” (78). Generally speaking, though, the laws were applied in their most strict sense, and state agencies made decisions that were most disadvantageous toward Italian Jews.
Above all, not surprisingly, Livingston's study provides an unparalleled discussion of the impact of the racial laws on matters of property ownership, mortgages, shareholding, estates, marriages, employment, and other areas of law and administration related to finance, investing, and taxation. By probing unique or ambiguous cases, much as in a law school seminar, Livingston reveals the contours and limits of how state and court officials viewed the racial laws. Moreover, he shows how such decisions had reverberations that reached far beyond Jewish-owned assets. For example, non-Jewish creditors, businesses, and other concerns often faced potentially harsh collateral damages due to confiscations of Jewish property. Therefore, in the case of mortgages, for example, the interests of the creditors were prioritized, sometimes resulting in settlements less harmful to Jews. Livingston also reveals surprising contradictions in Fascist race policies. Although Jews were forbidden from directly owning all sorts of businesses and prohibited from practicing relatively insignificant trades and professions, when it came to passive stock ownership they could own a large, even majority, share in large companies.
Much of Livingston's work is concerned not just with legislation, but also with the judges, lawyers, and state officials who interpreted, tested, and implemented the law. Examining the behaviors of judges, Livingston finds that they “combined a rather admirable concern for law and legal principles with an equally pronounced indifference to the real-world, human implications of the Race Laws” (136). When compared to the magistrates of Fascist Italy, judges in Nazi Germany and Vichy France “appear to have exhibited greater alacrity in expanding or extending the sweep of anti-Semitic legislation” (141–142). In general, though, Livingston concludes that Italian courts were “largely indifferent to the fate of the Jews” (147). That said, some judges criticized the race laws “as a derogation from broader principles of Italian jurisprudence” (147). Livingston also discusses the small number of magistrates and jurists who took issue with the Fascist state's incursions into the legal system, men like Domenico Riccardo Peretti-Griva, Arturo Carlo Jemolo, and Piero Calamendrei. Without engaging in hagiography, Livingston notes that an “independent or contrarian streak—a willingness to go it alone despite the lack of outside encouragement—appears to characterize such actors” (154). Their “distaste for the Race Laws appears to have been part of a broader distaste for the degradation of law and morals during the Fascist era. …” (155).
In later chapters, Livingston moves his attention away from borderline legal cases and examines local case studies and the phenomenon of Jewish resistance. In Ferrara, a provincial capital, he finds that the laws “were enforced according to and in many cases beyond the letter of the law.” They were, he continues, “arbitrary and petty, and at times even tedious in nature—but they were also enforced and respected, no more but certainly no less than any other law” (181). Whereas in Ferrara denunciations and enforcement appeared almost “random,” in Turin anti-Semitic persecution was organized, “routine and bureaucratic,” and mainly initiated by Fascist syndicates, professional organizations, and newspapers” (189).
Livingston's book is a welcome addition to the study of Italian Fascism and its racial laws. Much of the scholarship on Fascism and the Jews has focused on the Holocaust, whereas Livingston's work deals almost entirely with the period preceding the Holocaust. Thus his focus—questions of legal interpretation and implementation during the period between 1938 and 1943—is quite novel. Throughout the work, moreover, Livingston compares the Italian case to racial regimes in Germany, the United States, and France. This comparative perspective helps him identify the specificity of the Italian laws, arguing that the Italians were not necessarily “good” compared to the Germans, but rather that the historical context and the nature of the dictatorship were very different compared to Nazi Germany. This comparative perspective will certainly increase the work's value to scholars, students, and general readers alike.
