Search results for "economic analysis of law"

The role of punishment in the works of Adam Smith

2009

The reformation of criminal justice is one of the great themes in Enlightenment culture and concerned its main exponents from Montesquieu to Beccaria, Filangieri, Bentham. One of the traits of greater modernity in the theories worked out by juridical Enlightenment is the resort to the utilitarianinspired economic analysis. Adam Smith doesn't back out of this scientific and civil commitment, but his doctrine appears significantly different though contemporary to juridical Enlightenment, and is also based on economic argumentations. In this work we will look through the main writings which contain the Smithian thought in search of those parts dealing with the theme of punishment and its socia…

STRATEGIE PENALI ED ANALISI ECONOMICA DELLA CRIMINALITÀ D'IMPRESA

AN ECONOMIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF LAW IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: GAETANO FILANGIERI AND LA SCIENZA DELLA LEGISLAZIONE

2011

This work presents the elements of economic analysis of law that occur in the thought of Gaetano Filangieri. In the pages of La Scienza della Legislazione the Neapolitan writer develops a utilitarian and economic investigation that pays attention to the judgments individuals make over social phenomena at the margin point. A proof of this development can be found in the explanation of the principle of decreasing marginal utility, argued in Head XXXI of Book III, which represents one of the most effective demonstrations that can be found before the end of nineteenth-century literature. The most remarkable fact is that, of all the five parts that compose the Filangierian work, the most rich in…

CRIMINOLOGY AND ECONOMIC IDEAS IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

2009

My purpose is to point out that during the Age of Enlightenment, and its later 19th century expressions, the most relevant works on law contain examples of economic ideas about criminal phenomena and their legal repression. I will comment the analytic conclusions to which the authors of the time got to, with reference to specific questions such as the definition of crime, the determination of punishment, the judicial procedure. I will take into account some of the most representative European writers: Montesquieu, Beccaria and Bentham. The authors I selected share the characteristic of being all exponents of utilitarianism and of presenting elements which forerun neoclassical economics in t…

Adam Smith and The Law

2013

The law is one of the main subjects in Adam Smith’s studies. He deals with it in the Lectures of Jurisprudence (LJ) and in the Wealth of the Nations (WN) and his ethical and philosophical premises are exposed in the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). This interest in law is consistent with enlightenment culture which aspired to elaborate a great Science of Legislation in order to have enough knowledge to reform society and replace the Ancien Régime institutions with new ones able to support the course of progress and improve the life of the people. Yet, Smithian thought, while sharing the cultural aim of his age, is divergent from Juridical Enlightenment in many ways. I explain this divergen…

Le istituzioni, la politica e la legislazione negli articoli de «La Croce di Savoia»

2008

The journal «La Croce di Savoia» has been considered for a long time a source of great interest in the historiography on Francesco Ferrara for the particular historical circumstances in which it was published and for the first-rank role economic ideas had among the contents of its articles. Public finance,commercial policy and custom duties reform are among its most recurring topics, together with a wider range of topics of discussion such as: the institutions, their organization and their functioning; the political action of States and of political parties; the legislation over the judicial organization and over local authorities. The essay focuses on the writings pointing out the economic…