[Rezension zu Filippo Virgilii: Cooperazione nella sociologia e nella legislazione]

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Filippo Virgilii’s Cooperazione nella sociologia e nella legislazione (1900)

Schullern’s brief review commends Virgilii’s study of cooperation for combining theoretical, practical, historical, and legal perspectives. Introducing the Siena professor as especially known for statistics, he describes a careful inquiry into cooperation’s various forms, essential character, practical significance, and origins. His judgment rests on the breadth and care of the treatment rather than on a detailed assessment of its conclusions.

The review then singles out the book’s second part, shifting from the general study of cooperation to the legal organization of cooperative societies:

Im zweiten Theile behandelt der Verfasser sorgfältig insbesondere die italienische Gesetzgebung mit Rücksicht auf Wesen, Begründung und Verwaltung, Auflösung, Vereinigung und Liquidation solcher Genossenschaften und mit Bezug auf deren Besteuerung.

English translation: In the second part the author treats carefully, in particular, Italian legislation with regard to the nature, foundation and administration, dissolution, amalgamation and liquidation of such cooperatives, and with reference to their taxation.

This enumeration makes institutional arrangements central to the review’s account: formation and administration receive attention alongside dissolution, combination, liquidation, and taxation. Schullern closes by identifying this nationally specific legal treatment as the book’s particular value for readers abroad:

Speziell dieser zweite Theil hat für den Nichtitaliener Interesse.

English translation: This second part in particular is of interest for the non-Italian.

The review thus recommends Virgilii’s book both as a broad investigation of cooperation and, more pointedly, as a resource for understanding Italian cooperative legislation.