Democrazia e Diritti Sociali (Jun 2024)
Il problema penale nel pensiero di Piero Calamandrei
Abstract
This essay examines Piero Calamandrei’s changing thought on criminal law, understood as a problem, for having to reconcile the principle nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege – condition of «certainty of law and therefore of legality» – and the need for justice, «even beyond matters of law». It considers the two editions of Dei delitti e delle pene by Cesare Beccaria (1945, 1949); the reflection on the «laws against fascism» (August 1944) and on the Nuremberg trial (1946); the different judgment on penal and penal-procedural codification (1930) in 1945 and in 1955. It shows that, in the light of the Constitution, Calamandrei maintained the unconstitutionality of public safety laws (1931) and life imprisonment; spoke out against the death penalty in the world; ‘militated’ for a «new» penal legality, with the tight criticism of the criminal justice of democratic Italy, still imbued with the «authoritarian spirit» of the fascist regime.
