Against the Death Penalty : : Writings from the First Abolitionists—Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria / / Giuseppie Pelli; ed. by Peter Garnsey.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2020 English
• VerfasserIn: Pelli, Giuseppie,
• HerausgeberIn: Garnsey, Peter,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (226 p.)

The first known abolitionist critique of the death penalty—here for the first time in EnglishIn 1764, a Milanese aristocrat named Cesare Beccaria created a sensation when he published On Crimes and Punishments. At its centre is a rejection of the death penalty as excessive, unnecessary, and pointless. Beccaria is deservedly regarded as the founding father of modern criminal-law reform, yet he was not the first to argue for the abolition of the death penalty. Against the Death Penalty presents the first English translation of the Florentine aristocrat Giuseppe Pelli's critique of capital punishment, written three years before Beccaria's treatise, but lost for more than two centuries in the Pelli family archives.Peter Garnsey examines the contrasting arguments of the two abolitionists, who drew from different intellectual traditions. Pelli was a devout Catholic influenced by the writings of natural jurists such as Hugo Grotius, whereas Beccaria was inspired by the French Enlightenment philosophers. While Beccaria attacked the criminal justice system as a whole, Pelli focussed on the death penalty, composing a critique of considerable depth and sophistication. Garnsey explores how Beccaria's alternative penalty of forced labour, and its conceptualization as servitude, were embraced in Britain and America, and delves into Pelli's voluminous diaries, shedding light on Pelli's intellectual development and painting a vivid portrait of an Enlightenment man of letters and of conscience.With translations of letters exchanged by the two abolitionists and selections from Beccaria's writings, Against the Death Penalty provides new insights into eighteenth-century debates about capital punishment and offers vital historical perspectives on one of the most pressing questions of our own time.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli (1729–1808) -- Texts -- Giuseppe Pelli: Against the Death Penalty. Text and Fragments -- Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria: Correspondence (1766–67) -- Context -- Tuscany -- The Man -- The Life-Cycle of Against the Death Penalty -- Milieu -- Career -- Conclusion -- Argument of Against the Death Penalty -- Preliminaries -- The Proofs -- Lex talionis -- Conclusion -- Cesare Beccaria Bonesana (1738–1794) -- Texts -- Beccaria against the Death Penalty and for Forced Labour -- Law of Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, against the Death Penalty (1786; excerpts) -- Opinion (‘Voto’) of Beccaria, Gallarati Scotti and Risi against the Death Penalty (1792) -- Context -- Lombardy -- On Crimes and Punishments -- Career -- Milieu, Authorship, Character -- Patronage and Publication -- Argument against the Death Penalty -- Preliminaries -- Chapter 28 in Outline -- Commentary -- Postscript: From Forced Labour to Penal Servitude -- Preliminaries -- Beccaria on Forced Labour -- Beccaria and Bentham -- Beccaria and Jefferson -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- General Bibliography -- Index