Montesquieu on Criminal Judgments

800 North Harvey Avenue,Oklahoma City OK 73102

21 October, 2021

Description

Join us for our annual Brennan Lecture on October 21 from 6-7:00pm in Crowe & Dunlevy Commons (Rooms 308 & 309) with a reception to follow. This year's lecture will be given by Vickie Sullivan, Cornelia M. Jackson Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. CLE Credit Pending. Please enter through the North doors of OCU Law (800 N Harvey Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73102). Montesquieu (1689-1755) was a dominating figure of the French Enlightenment. Although his theory of the separation of powers had a profound influence on the Framers of the American Constitution, contemporary scholars largely find his relevance as a thinker who refuses to cast judgment on the vast array of societies he examines, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western. Such scholars regard the philosopher as an objective social scientist, a relativist, and a particularist. This lecture will focus, however, on his views of criminal judgments. In Spirit of the Laws, he proclaims: “The knowledge already acquired in some countries and yet to be acquired in others, concerning the surest rules one can observe in criminal judgments, is of more concern to humankind than to anything else in the world.” Thus, on the matter of criminal judgments, this philosopher—who wrote indirectly and generally eschewed offering his own opinions in favor of making seemingly neutral observations—issues an opinion in the superlative that has wide-ranging implications. This lecture will explore how Montesquieu treats criminal judgments in his majestical work The Spirit of the Laws and why he might deem knowledge of the correct way to proceed in rendering such judgments the most important knowledge simply. It will also look briefly at the influence Montesquieu’s view of criminal laws and punishments had on subsequent thinkers.