Tímarit lögfræðinga - 01.10.1989, Side 9

of criminal justice, inherited from the Middle Ages, were for
proportionality of the penal reaction to the gravity of the crime and
to the blameworthiness of the offender giving everybody what his acts
merit to receive. Further requests by the reform movement in that
time were for equality of treatment in courts for all, for the abolition
of cruel and inhuman sanctions, especially of the death penalty, for
the independence of judges, for general prevention by not more than
strict and equal prosecution of all offences, for the improvement of
prisons by educational and vocational training. This period, called
“classicism” or “idealism”, is represented in Germany by the philo-
sophy of Kant, Hegel and P. J. A. Feuerbach, in Italy by Cesare
Beccaria.
2. Positivism. — It came with the rise of anthropology and sociology.
By the influence of A. Lacassagne, Gabriel Tarde, and Emile Durkheim
in France, Ferdinand Tönnies in Germany in the second half of the
19th century, the philosophical outlook known as positivism came to
dominate the evolution of criminal law and criminal policy in Europe.
The leading criminologists at that time were the Italians Cesai’e Lom-
broso, Enrico Ferri, and Raffaele Garofalo. In Germany Franz v. Liszt,
departing from the traditional idealistic notion of justice based on
personal guilt, developed the theory of the social purpose of punish-
ment (Zweckgedanke). This theory was used to determine the type
and severity of criminal law sanctions instead of personal guilt. The
modern sociological school, as this movement was called, has gi’eatly
influenced the evolution of criminal law in many European countries
in the second half of the 19th and in the first half of the 20th century.
3. Organizations. — The movement of reform was carried through
and disseminated in many countries by some important scholarly
international societies.
a) International Union and International Association of Penal Law.
The driving force of the movement for reform of criminal law,
before the first World War, was the International Union of Penal Law
(IKV), founded jointly in 1889 by the German Franz v. Liszt, the
Belgian Adolphe Prins, and the Dutchman Gérard van Hamel. After
the first World War its work has been continued by the International
Association of Penal Law (AIDP) which was founded in 1924 in Paris,
as the result mainly of French and Belgian initiative. It is the oldest
and gi’eatest scholarly organization in the field of criminal law and
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