The Origins and Brief History of Italian Criminal Law

Abstract

In my thesis, I provide a comprehensive overview of the most prominent figures in the history of Italian criminal law and their ideas. In the mid-18th century, the Enlightenment laid the intellectual foundations of modern criminal law. One of its most renowned figures, Cesare Beccaria, who was more of a philosopher than a jurist, established principles that continue to shape criminal law to this day. We can speak of modern criminal law from the mid-19th century, with the birth of the so-called classical school. The greatest master of the classical school was Francesco Carrara, who is often referred to as the father of criminal law. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the positivist school emerged as the antithesis of the dogmatic classical school; the science of criminology developed, and increasing attention was paid to the offender and the context of the crime, as well as to social conditions. The doctrines of the classical and positivist schools are also combined in
the provisions of the second — and still current — Italian Penal Code, the Codice Rocco (1930). In the first half of the 20th century, legal technicality gained ground in Fascist Italy; weary of the ideological battles between the classical and positivist schools, it confined itself to the examination of the law in force and viewed criminal law as an instrument of governance rather than as a reflection of classical or positivist ideology. After World War II, Italy’s form of government changed from a monarchy to a republic; the Constitution of the Italian Republic came into force in 1948, and from that point on, constitutional interpretation became the dominant approach in Italian criminal law scholarship. In the second half of the 20th century, there were still schools of criminal law that influenced the doctrine of Italian criminal law, but truly significant changes did not come until later, with the European integration.