Beccaria Of Crimes And Punishments Analysis

Tajae Hinds Of Crimes and Punishments Essay Cesare Beccaria’s critiques of criminology in Old Regime Europe were, as some may say, ahead of his time. The Old Regime was predominantly built on a tradition of absolutism in government and its legislature. That being so, Beccaria’s critiques of these institutionalized traditions spoke volumes about what needed to be fixed, and posed solutions to said problems. In his treatise Of Crimes and Punishments, the criminologist mentions the obscurity of laws, as well as the interpretation of laws. To this day, remnants of Beccaria’s philosophies and its principles are still relevant, echoing throughout the judicial and legislative models in nations around the world. The obscurity of laws, as Beccaria critiqued, is an evil that comes from a lack of understanding. Simply put, laws are meant to be understood by all who must obey them. Without this kind of comprehensiveness, people become vulnerable to their own ignorance of the law and are at mercy of a select few, ultimately left to their own devices. This could have been Beccaria’s own commentary on society itself. As it goes, those with money and power tend to take advantage of the limited liberties of …show more content…
They have not received the law because it is handed down to them, but receive the law from the sovereign. In Beccaria’s case “the sovereign” could mean “the people” instead of the actual monarch. One can believe it to be so because Beccaria’s greatest influence came from the immortal Montesquieu and his Enlightenment philosophies of a limited government with a sole focus on popular sovereignty, but this digresses. He comments that laws should be left up to interpretation, not by a judge, but by a representative of society. If interpretation if left up to the logic of the judge, then it is open to be used incorrectly and