The Italian contribution to Anglo-Saxon criminal legal thought

Abstract

The text synthesizes the Italian contribution to Anglo-Saxon criminal legal thought, identifying five fundamental historical stages: the methodological influence of classical Roman law upon England during Roman rule; the legacy of Roman canon law following Christianization; the contribution of the Norman system, itself linked to the Latin tradition, after 1066; the impact of Cesare Beccaria's Enlightenment criminal thought in the eighteenth century; and the opening to Cesare Lombroso's positivist criminology in the nineteenth century. Drawing on historical-comparative analysis and references to Roman jurists, glossators and post-glossators, as well as to Bentham and Blackstone, the author concludes that, although the normative content of Anglo-Saxon law developed autonomously, its case-law method and procedural institutions owe much to the Roman-Italian matrix.