Ludovico Fulci (1 January 185028 June 1934) was a lawyer and professor of jurisprudence from Sicily who became a national Italian politician. He can, for most purposes, be considered to have been a member of the Radical Party ("Partito Radicale storico"). During an unusually lengthy parliamentary career, he served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies ("Camera dei deputati"), between 1882 and 1913, and then - some thought in defiance of his own his anti-Monarchist principals - accepted nomination by the king as a senator in 1919, serving in the senate until his death in 1934.
Biography
Provenance and early years
Ludovico Fulci was born in Santa Lucia del Mela, a small municipality located in the hills to the west of the provincial capital, Messina. He was the son of Antonio Fulci by his marriage to Nicolina Taccone, who was also of aristocratic provenance. The Fulci of Santa Lucia del Mela were a family from the minor nobility, originally from Tropea. They had moved from Calabria to Sicily during the sixteenth century. Ludovico's father, Antonio Fulci, was a lawyer who also held a teaching chair in Civil law at the University of Messina. Ludovico was a family name which he shared both with his uncle and with his grandfather.
Young lawyer
Ludovico graduated with a degree in law from the University of Messina and in 1873 launched himself as a criminal lawyer. He also sustained an academic interest in the law, evidenced by the publication in 1879 of his brief but challenging volume "Di alcuni problemi giuridici fondamentali" (loosely, "On some fundamental legal problems"). The book is concerned less with his professional speciality - criminal law - and more with the underlying philosophy of civil law. Themes tackled include the nature of the state, the very concept of law and the complex interaction between law and morality. He obtained a professorship in criminal law at the university in 1891.
Deputy
Meanwhile, on 29 October 1882 the electoral college for Messina elected him to membership of the Chamber of Deputies ("Camera dei deputati"), the elected lower house of the Italian parliament. He was re-elected at no fewer than nine subsequent general elections, the last of them being that of 18 July 1909. Political parties within the parliament during this period were still relatively loose groupings, but Ludovico Fulci is normally classified in sources as a Radical Party member. In 1908 he voted for the contentious Bissolati motion which sought to outlaw religious education in primary schools. Fulci combined his university teaching and his national political duties with membership of the Provincial Council for Messina, of which he became vice-president. and, eventually, president.
One project in which he was closely involved during this period involved a new aqueduct constructed for Messina. A college of arbitration was created to settle some of the disputes arising from the project, in which Fulci appeared as the lawyer representing the municipality. His success in winning a major dispute on behalf of the municipal authorities significantly accelerated the aqueduct's completion.
Fulci's advocacy skills were also on display when he teamed up with fellow-lawyer Francesco Crispi to head up the defence team for the posthumous retrial as to facts held at the assize court in Rome, following the execution in Trieste of Guglielmo Oberdan. Trieste at this time was still an Austrian city subjugated, according to Italian nationalists, to a form of illegitimate military occupation. Oberdan's alleged crime was that he had plotted to assassinate the Austrian emperor. His last words were "viva Italia!" and he accordingly rapidly acquired martyr status among patriotic Italians. Fulci may not have shared Crispi's (late-flowering) monarchist sentiments, but he was just as much of an Italian patriot.
Following the 1887 cholera epidemic, Fulci founded "The Golden Cross" ("La croce d'oro"), a large-scale public assistance organisation. Recognition followed in the form of a Silver Medal of Public Health and Welfare.