This volume critically explores the basis and the goal of punishment from the standpoint of the right to punish. The work reviews the main doctrines that have dealt with the theme of punishment from Antiquity to the present, not limiting itself to the legal-philosophical sphere but also analyzing the contributions from other social sciences. It then explores how these are reflected in the sphere of Positive Law.

The book shares the results of project research granted by the Castilla-La Mancha government, which has been composed by philosophers of law and criminal law researchers, whose main conclusions are represented by the manifestations and trends of the current crisis of the constitutional State. The works identify these trends and manifestations in order to develop alternatives and remedies to solve the current negation process that classical liberties are involved, from the point of view of philosophy, policy, and dogmatic.

Explores the interaction between the criminal justice system and the wider concerns of political and social institutions, including the welfare state, social work and forensic psychiatry.

Apart from considering classical theories of justice from Aristotle, Plato, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Bible, and the Quran, the aim of Justice and Law is to focus on the contemporary vista, reviewing some of the modern ideas of justice advanced by legal philosophers of our time, such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Richard A. Posner, Wojciech Sadurski, Marxism, or Feminist Theories. In the second part of the work, María José Falcón y Tella deals with some of the principal themes relating to justice, such as punishment, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, just war, conflict of duties, and tolerance.

Opening a new area in Latin American studies, The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America showcases the most recent historical outlooks on prison reform and criminology in the Latin American context. The essays in this collection shed new light on the discourse and practice of prison reform, the interpretive shifts induced by the spread of criminological science, and the links between them and competing discourses about class, race, nation, and gender. The book shows how the seemingly clear redemptive purpose of the penitentiary project was eventually contradicted by conflicting views about imprisonment, the pervasiveness of traditional forms of repression and control, and resistance from the lower classes. The essays are unified by their attempt to view the penitentiary (as well as the variety of representations conveyed by the different reform movements favoring its adoption) as an interpretive moment, revealing of the ideology, class fractures, and contradictory nature of modernity in Latin America. As such, the book should be of interest not only to scholars concerned with criminal justice history, but also to a wide range of readers interested in modernization, social identities, and the discursive articulation of social conflict. The collection also offers an up-to-date sampling of new historical approaches to the study of criminal justice history, illuminates crucial aspects of the Latin American modernization process, and contrasts the Latin American cases with the better known European and North American experiences with prison reform.

Explores the interaction between the criminal justice system and the wider concerns of political and social institutions, including the welfare state, social work and forensic psychiatry.