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2005
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Hours (Time) Commonwealth, The Geneva Tormento Tortura (Derecho) Duración Horas (Tiempo) Ginebra Sciences juridiques Aspect juridique Droit positif Régime juridique Systèmes juridiques Système juridique Science du droit Ordre juridique Actes de barbarie Supplices Tortures Question (droit pénal) SuppliceCiter ce document
Françoise Briegel et al., « Le droit de punir en république Genève au temps des Lumières », Dix-Huitième Siècle, ID : 10.3406/dhs.2005.2656
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Résumé
At the heart of absolutist Europe, spared by wars, the town of Geneva became a sovereign Republic as of the Calvinist Reform (1536). Reduced body of citizens, direct voting, «virtue » of the magistrates, omnipresence of the law : if, during the Enlightenment, Geneva's democracy, hailed by Rousseau, resembled that of the Ancients, the Republic's legal system is closer to that of the moderns. Power of the public prosecutor which limited the magistrates' arbitrariness, abolition of torture, moderate use of instruments of torture and capital punishment, legal defence of the accused, concerns about prisons : as of 1738, the original characteristics of Geneva's criminal justice were recognised in particular by the reformist label which D'Alembert awarded it in 1757 in the Encyclopédie. Legal practice, viewed here through the criminal archives, echoes the «moderation » of the institutions which Montesquieu associated with non despotic regimes.