Against the Death Penalty

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It was discovered in the late 1980's among the papers of the descendants of his adopted daughter, and was published in Italian in 2014. In Against the Death Penalty, Peter Garnsey, a historian of the Roman Empire and Italy, provides the first English translation of this important yet forgotten text. Although Beccaria attacked the whole criminal justice system of his time, Pelli's work was singulr in its focus on attacking on just the death penalty. As such, it was the first attack of any substance that appeared in Europe, and although unfinished, it is a work of considerable sophistication and depth. It is a comprehensive critique, considerably longer and more thorough than that of Beccaria. Pelli was also a man of religious convictions and operated within the Catholic tradition: for his key arguments he drew on the writings of the natural jurists, in particular Grotius and Pufendorf. .