Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Parisi, Francesco; Frezza, Giampaolo --- "Cesare Beccaria (1738-94)" [1999] ELECD 31; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781858985169

Section: Chapter 24

Section Title: Cesare Beccaria (1738-94)

Author(s): Parisi, Francesco; Frezza, Giampaolo

Number of pages: 13

Extract:

24 Cesare Beccaria (1738-94)
Francesco Parisi and Giampaolo Frezza


It has now become a question of style for American authors to list Cesare
Beccaria among the forerunners of the economic analysis of criminal law,'
with specific reference to the work entitled Dei delitti e delle pene (On
Crimes and Beccaria was born in Milan, of a wealthy aristo-
cratic family. He received his education at a private college in Parma and
graduated from the University of Pavia Law School at the age of twenty.
During his lifetime, Beccaria held leading administrative posts in the Council
of Lombardy and served as provincial magistrate, while remaining an active
member of cultural circles and a proponent of legislative reform.

Beccaria's theories of social welfare
In the history of economic thought, Beccaria is occasionally included among
the fathers of modern utilitarianism. Scholars have debated the appropriate-
ness of such inclusion, given the frequent use of contractarian theories in
Beccaria's work. His work shows that utilitarian theories can be built on
contractarian premises, and his combined use of contrasting paradigms proves
that the two perspectives can successfully coexist.
According to some scholars of Beccaria's work, he utilized a hypothetical
contractarian framework to justify the purely utilitarian choices of positive
law. In reality, he successfully combined the utilitarian and contractarian
perspectives into a single coherent framework. In this respect, contractarianism
helped Beccaria avoid the paradoxes of pure utilitarianism. In this he pro-
vided a powerful inspiration for Bentham's utilitarian approach to ...