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Few Americans realize how influential an Italian author was by inspiring the Founding Fathers and promoting concepts that became part of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The author’s name was Cesare Beccaria. He was born in Milan in 1738, into a moderate level of the aristocracy. His father was Marchese Gian Beccaria Bones...

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When analyzing the foundation of legal principles in the United States, that base seemingly started with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. But the bedrock of the American justice system didn’t originate with those revolutionaries. It started with an Italian. Cesare Beccaria – one of the 18th century’s great philosophers –...

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John D. Bessler (University of Baltimore - School of Law) has posted The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law (Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2017) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The influence of the Italian Enlightenment—the Illuminismo—on the American R...

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