Cesare Beccaria: The Forgotten Giant of the Italian Enlightenment
Journal of Public Law and Policy
Volume 37 | Issue 1 Article 1
The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution:
Cesare Beccaria’s Forgotten Influence on American Law
John Bessler
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Recommended Citation
Bessler, John D. (2016) “ e Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria’s Forgo en In uence on American Law,” Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice: Vol. 37: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/jplp/vol37/iss1/1
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at DigitalCommons@Hamline. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Public Law and Policy by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Hamline. For more information, please contact Benjamin.Lacy@mitchellhamline.edu.
Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice
Volume 37 | Issue 1 Article 1
2016
The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria’s Forgotten Influence on American Law
John D. Bessler
Associate Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law
Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/jplp
Part of the International Law Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons.
Recommended Citation
Bessler, John D. (2016) “The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria’s Forgotten Influence on American Law,” Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice: Vol. 37: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/jplp/vol37/iss1/1
This article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Hamline. It has been accepted for inclusion in the Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Hamline. For more information, please contact Benjamin.Lacy@mitchellhamline.edu.
THE ITALIAN ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION: CESARE BECCARIA’S FORGOTTEN
INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN LAW
John D. Bessler‡
Abstract
The influence of the Italian Enlightenment—the Illuminismo—on the American Revolution has long been neglected. While historians regularly acknowledge the influence of European thinkers such as William Blackstone, John Locke and Montesquieu, Cesare Beccaria’s contributions to the origins and development of American law have largely been forgotten by twenty-first century Americans. In fact, Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into English as On Crimes and Punishments (1767), significantly shaped the views of American revolutionaries and lawmakers. The first four U.S. Presidents—George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—were inspired by Beccaria’s treatise and, in some cases, read it in the original Italian. On Crimes and Punishments helped to catalyze the American Revolution, and Beccaria’s anti-death penalty views materially shaped American thought on capital punishment, torture and cruelty. America’s foundational legal documents—the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Bill of Rights—were themselves shaped by Beccaria’s treatise and its insistence that laws be in writing and be enforced in a less arbitrary manner. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin studied Italian and read or spoke the language to one degree or another, and many early Americans also had a fascination with Italian history and the civil law. Though On Crimes and Punishments is focused largely on the criminal law, the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights—written documents protecting individual rights—echo the Beccarian idea of a fixed code of laws. Not only did leading figures of the Italian Enlightenment mold Beccaria’s work, but Beccaria’s treatise—now more than 250 years old—influenced a whole host of European and American thinkers, from Jeremy Bentham to Gaetano Filangieri and from James Wilson to Dr. Benjamin Rush. Beccaria’s ideas on government and the criminal justice system thereby profoundly shaped American law.
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‡ Associate Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center; Of Counsel, Berens & Miller, P.A. A special thanks is extended to Professor Alberto Cadoppi at the University of Parma and to Professor Lorenzo Picotti at the University of Verona for inviting me to speak at conferences in Italy in 2014 on the 250th anniversary of the publication of Cesare Beccaria’s treatise, Dei delitti e delle pene. Both conferences proved to be extremely informative as regards the global impact of Beccaria’s treatise.
2 Vol.37.1
I. INTRODUCTION
On Crimes and Punishments, written by the Italian criminal-law theorist Cesare Beccaria
(1738-1794), was first published in Italian in 1764 as Dei delitti e delle pene.1 It called for proportion between crimes and punishments, opposed both torture and capital punishment,
and quickly became a runaway bestseller.2 The treatise brought Beccaria, just 26 years old when he wrote it, considerable celebrity and fame. He was invited to Paris to be toasted by the French philosophes for his literary achievement, and he was asked by Catherine II to travel to Russia to help modernize that country’s laws.3 Having read Beccaria’s book around 1769, when he was admitted to the bar, Jeremy Bentham—the British philosopher who made penal reform his life’s work—was so taken with the book that he wrote of Beccaria: “Oh, my master, first evangelist of Reason… you who have made so many useful excursions into the path of utility, what is there left for us to do?” “When Beccaria came,” Bentham wrote in A Fragment on Government, “he was received by the intelligent as an Angel from heaven would be by the faithful.” “He may be styled the father of Censorial Jurisprudence,” Bentham added, taking stock of the Italian philosopher’s critical view of then-existing laws—laws full of inhumane and draconian punishments.4
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