Cesare Beccaria

Biography

Very inspired by Montesquieu and the encyclopedists French, Beccaria very early is interested in the related questions with equity of the legal system . It signs its chief of work at 26 years with Of the offenses and the sorrows (1764) which poses the bases of the modern reflection as regards criminal law. Some of the advanced arguments are already old, but Beccaria makes of it a perfect all the more new synthesis as it releases from very model religious. It establishes there the bases and the limits of the right to punish, and recommends to proportion the sorrow with the offense. Beccaria poses also in theory the separation of the religious and legal capacities. Denouncing the cruelty of certain sorrows compared with the Crime made, he considers “ barbarian ” the practice of the Torture and the Capital punishment, and recommends to prevent the crime rather than to repress it.

Very quickly translated of French Italian (1765), in English (1768), then in all the European languages , this work causes an authentic intellectual earthquake and receives the downstream of intellectuals of reputation like Voltaire or Diderot. Beccaria puts at the world the debate which has prevailed for more than two centuries between the partisans of the repression and those of the prevention, that Beccaria calls of its wishes. Very hostile with the capital punishment, it poses a demonstration, the first of the kind, which leads the author to qualify the capital punishment which is “ neither useful, nor necessary ”, of “ legal crime ”.

In 1768, one creates for him with Milan a pulpit of political economy where he teaches during two years, of 1769 to 1770. He had proposed to in general write a great work on the legislation; but it never put this project at execution. From 1770, he then becomes senior official in the Milanese administration under Austrian domination; he will occupy this station until his death.

The “Rousseau of the Italians” inspires the legal reforms carried out in France (1780) and in Sweden (1772) founding the abolition of the use of torture. The cases liable to capital punishment are drastiquement everywhere reduced in Europe between the end of 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, before a logical abolition at the 20th century. Beccaria is published in 1777 with the the United States, where it inspires Thomas Jefferson.

Some principles posed by Beccaria in Of the offenses and the sorrows :

“ light Nullum crimen nulla poena sine ” (in French: No the crime, not of punishment without law) today qualified principle of legality

“ the law should establish only sorrows strictly and obviously necessary, and no one can be punished only under the terms of one law established and promulgated before with the offense and legally applied. ” (Declaration of the human rights and the Citizen of August 26th, 1789, Article 8) called it not retroactivity of the more severe criminal law
“ No man cannot be marked, stopped nor held that in the cases determined by the law and according to the forms which it prescribed. ” (ibidem, Article 7)

“ the law has the right to defend only the harmful actions at the company. ” (ibidem, Article 5)
“ Any man being supposed innocent until it is declared guilty, if it is considered to be essential to stop it, any rigor which will not be necessary to make sure of its person must be severely repressed by the law. ” (ibidem, Article 9) translated by the Presumption of innocence

These principles are the pillars of justice today.

Its lessons were printed only after its death, in 1804. Beccaria had taken part in 1764 and 1765 in a periodic publication similar to the Spectateur, the Coffee (1764 - 1766), where various subjects of literature and philosophy were covered.

Capital punishment

It is in its work of the offenses and sorrows that he is opposed to the Capital punishment: It seems to me absurd that the laws, which are the expression of the public will, which hates and punishes the homicide, make one of them themselves, and, to move away the citizens from the assassination, order a public assassination.

Works

Its works were published in 1821 in Milan, 2 volumes in-8.

The Treated offenses and sorrows obtained a great number of editions; it was translated with 18th and 19th century by:

Andre Morellet, 1766
Etienne Chaillou de Lisy, 1773
Pierre-Joseph-Spiridion Dufey, 1810
Faustin Hélie, 1856.

He was commented on by Voltaire, Diderot, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Joseph-Michel-Antoine Servan, whose comments are joined together in the edition of Edmond Gauthier, Paris, 1823.

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