The 18th and 19th century movement to rationalize and humanize legal systems that had developed haphazardly over centuries. Bentham was the most systematic and ambitious legal reformer of his era, and many of his proposals — codified law, proportional punishment, prison reform, separation of powers — eventually became standard features of modern legal systems. Beccaria, Romilly, and many other reformers worked alongside or in dialogue with Bentham to transform Western legal practice over the course of the 19th century.
Tradition
Legal Reform
The 18th and 19th century movement to rationalize and humanize legal systems that had developed haphazardly over centuries.
Thinkers
Thinker
Jeremy Bentham
1748–1832
Jeremy Bentham was the English founder of utilitarianism, a legal reformer who tried to reduce every moral and political question to a single calculation of pleasure and pain
ThinkerNapoleon Bonaparte
1769–1821
Napoleon Bonaparte was the self-crowned French emperor whose Napoleonic Code modernized law across Europe, leaving history to debate whether he fulfilled the Revolution or betrayed it
Related through shared thinkers