There have been many hypotheses on the roots and motivations of the most famous 20th century Italian book on law, L'ordinamento giuridico by Santi Romano, published in Pisa in 1917-18. Until today it had never been considered the product of an atmosphere resulting from the very history of the Faculty of Law at Pisa. The genius loci inspiring, as in this case, particular attitudes to theory on the part of university teaching staff, is, in the 20th century, an amalgam comprising love of country, Roman law tradition and positivism and this amalgam continued even under Fascism. This aid to interpretation is also a guide to understanding several of the major figures holding chairs at Pisa in the period under consideration in Roman law, administrative law, civil law, commercial law, economics&politics and corporative law. Romano's book was republished in 1946 with notes by the author and it provides an excellent overview of the "Pisan manner" of dealing with the subject, based as that is on confidence in the importance and fertile nature of scientific disputation. Which also means that the true university spirit of enquiry had been fully restored, that being what had originally set the faculty at Pisa at the top of the academic tree for education and training in law. And it is of further significance, insofar as it counters those demands for judges to be the "mouthpiece of the law", conferring upon them the right, but also the duty, to be the "mouthpiece of the science of the law". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]