Francesco Paolo Casavola, farewell to the President Emeritus of the Constitutional Court
Next 12 January would have been his 95th birthday
Professor Francesco Paolo Casavola, President Emeritus of the Constitutional Court, died last night. He was one of the greatest Italian intellectuals of our time.
Born in Taranto on 12 January 1931, he graduated in Roman Law in Naples in 1953. In 1955, he became Assistant Professor to Prof. Francesco De Martino. He was Professor from 1960 to 1967 at the University of Bari and from 1967 at the University 'Federico II' of Naples, where he served as Faculty Dean from 1984 to 1986. He was President of the MEIC (Movimento Ecclesiale di Impegno Culturale) from 1980 to 1984.
He was an adjunct professor of Ius Romanum at the Pontifical Lateran Faculty in Rome from 1980 to 1986.
In February 1986 he was elected Constitutional Judge, and served as President of the Court from November 1992 until the end of his nine-year term in February 1995. Several rulings of the Constitutional Court, which he signed, marked profound changes in the country's constitutional order, and some of these are commonly remembered and cited as the 'Casavola rulings'.
In 1993-1994 he was a member of the Arbitration Commission for the former Yugoslavia. From 1996 to 1998 he was Garante per l'Editoria e la Radiodiffusione. From 1998 to 2009, he was President of the Italian Encyclopaedia Institute-Treccani. From 2006 to 2015, he was President of the National Bioethics Committee. He was Adjunct Professor at LUMSA in Rome from 1995 to 1999, and at the University 'Suor Orsola Benincasa' in Naples from 2004 to 2013.
