Ludovico Barassi

Ludovico Barassi (1873 to 1956) was an Italian jurist who became one of the leading authorities on civil law in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. After studying at Pavia and Berlin he took a professorship at Perugia in 1900, later taught at Genoa, moved to Pavia in 1917 and finished his career at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan from 1924, where he was full professor of civil law and, from 1928 to 1942, in charge of labor law. His civil law textbook Istituzioni di diritto civile (1924) was used by generations of Italian students, and his Il contratto di lavoro nel diritto civile italiano (1901) is credited with establishing labour law as a scientific discipline in Italy. He argued that wage labour applies to subordinate employment, recognised by direction from the employer, as opposed to the worker organising his own work in self-employment, and he placed rights in intellectual works within the scheme of property rights.