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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Marquis Beccaria: An Italian Penal Reformer’S Meteoric Rise In The British Isles In The Transatlantic Republic Of Letters, John Bessler
The Marquis Beccaria: An Italian Penal Reformer’S Meteoric Rise In The British Isles In The Transatlantic Republic Of Letters, John Bessler
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This article traces the reception of Cesare Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), in Britain and in colonial and early America. That book, first translated into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767), catalyzed penal reform and the anti-gallows movement on both sides of the Atlantic. As the first Enlightenment text to make a comprehensive case against capital punishment, On Crimes and Punishments became a bestseller, appearing in multiple English-language editions and attracting much public attention. Widely read by an array of British and American lawmakers and other civic-minded penal reformers, On Crimes and Punishments was …
Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts
Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts
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In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …