The Catania jurist Enzo Musco died in Rome

Rome – The jurist Enzo Musco, one of the leading experts in criminal law, co-author with Giovanni Fiandaca of the “Manual of criminal law” (Zanichelli) on which generations of lawyers and magistrates were trained, died suddenly on Friday 11 June in Rome at the age of 77 years. The announcement of the disappearance was made by the family.

Graduated in law from the University of Catania in 1966, professor and lawyer Musco has carried out research in criminal law at the Catholic University of Milan and at the Max Planck Institute for International and Comparative Criminal Law in Freiburg under the guide by Hans Heinrich Jescheck. In 1979 he became full professor of criminal law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Catania and then from 1989 at the Faculty of Law of the Tor Vergata University of Rome. For about a decade he taught commercial criminal law at the Accademia della Guardia di Finanza; he was also the holder of the teaching of corporate criminal law at the Tax Police School of the Guardia di Finanza until 2003. In 1985 he published the first edition of the manual of “Criminal Law” with the Fiancada jurists for the types of Zanichelli, which over time has been adopted in several Italian universities as a reference text and used as a fundamental text for preparing for the judiciary competition, for the bar exam and in general for all the most important public competitions.

Musco was coordinator of the criminal law group of the Ministerial Commission on the reform of company law and contributed to the drafting of the legislative decree n. 61 of April 14, 2002 which modified the discipline of corporate crimes. In 2004 he published the monograph entitled “The criminal illusion” (Giuffrè), which takes stock of the recognized crisis of criminal law and interpretation and proposes a new model of solution to the criminal problems that have emerged in recent decades: in particular it indicates a way – always constitutionally oriented – to put an end to the so-called penal legislation ad personam. In 2005 he was appointed member of the prestigious “International Academy of Trial Lawyers” which pursues the aim of comparing the American legal system with that of other states. Since 1980 he has worked as a lawyer: in the forensic activity Musco has privileged the jurisdiction of legality and the sectors of crimes against the economy (in particular tax crimes and corporate crimes), against the environment, against the public administration. He has assisted important Italian and foreign industrial groups in criminal matters.

Musco’s books also include “Criminal Tax Law” (with Francesco Ardito, Zanichelli), “Corporate Criminal Law” (1999) and “The new corporate crimes” (Giuffrè). With the then constitutional judge Ettore Gallo Musco he signed “Crimes against the constitutional order” (1984), a volume dedicated to crimes against the personality of the State, which highlighted the most authoritarian aspects of the criminal law created by Alfredo Rocco in 1930 and indicated interpretative solutions more in line with constitutional principles in criminal matters. Musco was co-director of the “Italian Review of Criminal Law and Procedure”, of the “Italian Penal Review”, of the “Rivista Rassegna Tributaria”, of the “Spanish Language Criminal Review”, as well as of the criminal law series “Itineraries of Criminal Law” and of the “Quaderni penalali” series. He is the author of numerous scientific writings, with particular attention to the relationship between “politics” and “criminal law”, where the different models of interaction are analyzed: from conflict, to integration and autonomy. At the beginning of the 90s he participated in a series of researches at the United Nations Institute against crime which is based in San Jose di Costa Rica: the topics covered ranged from freedom of the press to juvenile crime, as demonstrated by the volumes published in that period.