Two hundred and fifty years since the publication of On Crimes and Punishments

The currency of Cesare Beccaria’s thought

Bibliographic Data

ID12664123
AuthorsLuigi Ferrajoli (0000-0001-6495-9868, Roma Tre University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume16
Issue5
Pages501-519
Publication date2014-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePunishment & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1462-4745 • E-ISSN: 1741-3095
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1462474514551524
OpenAlexW2313149905
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited3

This essay highlights three aspects of the extraordinarily current relevance of Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments in the 250th year since its publication. The first aspect concerns criminal law, which Beccaria founded anew as a system of individual safeguards against the arbitrariness and excess of punishment – a normative model still largely to be realized today. The second aspect consists in the constituent character of Beccaria’s thought. Together with other Enlightenment thinkers, he paved the way for the political doctrine of limited public powers – the doctrine that would usher in, well beyond the boundaries of criminal law, the contemporary and still largely unaccomplished constitutionalism of legal safeguards and fundamental human rights. The third aspect of Beccaria’s relevance consists in the critical and propositional role he assigned to philosophical reflection vis-à-vis positive law, on the ground of its axiological foundations and a militant defence of the values inherent in the legal artifice

Constitutionalism · Criminal law · Democracy · Doctrine · Legal doctrine · Normative · Political science · Politics · Punishment (psychology · Relevance (law · Sociology · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law

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