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Cesare Beccaria - The Genius of 'On Crimes and Punishments' (Paperback, New)
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Cesare Beccaria - The Genius of 'On Crimes and Punishments' (Paperback, New)
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A brand new book by eminent legal biographer and historian John
Hostettler. Hard on the heels of his acclaimed work with Richard
Braby on Sir William Garrow, comes a further text on one of crime
and punishments under-recorded and maybe unsung heroes. In
eighteenth century continental Europe penal law was barbaric.
Gallows were a regular feature of the landscape, branding and
mutilation common and there existed the ghastly spectacle of men
being broken on the wheel. To make matters worse, people were often
tortured or put to death for minor crimes (sometimes both) and
often without any trial at all. Like a bombshell, a book entitled
On Crimes and Punishments, exploded onto the scene in 1764 with
shattering effect. Its author was a young nobleman named Cesare
Beccaria (1738-1794). A central message of that - now classic -
work were that such punishments were part of 'a war of nations
against their citizens' and should be abolished. It was a cri de
coeur for thorough reform of the law affecting punishments and it
swept across the continent of Europe like wildfire, being adopted
by one ruler after another. It even crossed the Atlantic to the new
United States of America, in the hands of Thomas Jefferson. In a
wonderful sentence which concludes Beccaria's book, he sums up
matters as follows: 'In order that every punishment may not be an
act of violence, committed by one man or by many against a single
individual, it ought to be above all things public, speedy,
necessary, the least possible in the given circumstances,
proportioned to its crime [and] dictated by the laws'. A welcome
addition to the Waterside Press list of biographical and historical
works, this new book on Cesare Beccaria - targeted to highlight
matters of both universal and current relevance - will be of
considerable interest to anyone wishing to trace the development of
the rights of individuals charged with or convicted of crimes, and
of the importance of fairness, proportionality, decency and similar
matters which may be at-risk in the wrong hands. Civilising penal
law remains a topical issue but it began with the subject of this
work.
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