From Casuistry to the General Part. The Conception of Criminal Responsibility from the ius commune to the Penal Codes (Twelfth–Nineteenth Centuries)

The chapter explores the origins and development of the notion of criminal responsibility in the late medieval legal sources and its modern shift from a casuistic to a principled conception, linked to the formation and institutionalisation of the modern State since the sixteenth century on. It will be divided into three main parts: the first will be focused on the ius commune doctrine (twelfth to sixteenth centuries) and the gradual elaboration of the theory that indictable conducts should always imply either malice (dolus) or negligence (culpa). The second part will concern the systematisation of the rules of criminal responsibility within a theoretical framework no longer reliant nor dependent on cases but driven by principles and general rules. The third part addresses the central role played by the notion of criminal liability in the general part of the penal codes enacted in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.