University of Baltimore Law ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law All Faculty Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 2017 The tI alian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law John Bessler University of Baltimore School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac Part of the European Law Commons, Law and Politics Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation John Bessler, The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law, 37 Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice 1 (2017). Available at: http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac/972 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE ITALIAN ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: CESARE BECCARIA’S FORGOTTEN INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN LAW John D. Bessler‡ Abstract The influence of the Italian Enlightenment—the Illuminismo—on the American Revolution has long been neglected. While historians regularly acknowledge the influence of European thinkers such as William Blackstone, John Locke and Montesquieu, Cesare Beccaria’s contributions to the origins and development of American law have largely been forgotten by twenty-first century Americans. In fact, Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into English as On Crimes and Punishments (1767), significantly shaped the views of American revolutionaries and lawmakers.