This volume addresses an important historiographical gap by assessing the respective contributions of tradition and foreign influences to the 19th century codification of criminal law. More specifically, it focuses on the extent of French influence – among others – in European and American civil law jurisdictions. In this regard, the book seeks to dispel a number of myths concerning the French model’s actual influence on European and Latin American criminal codes. The impact of the Napoleonic criminal code on other jurisdictions was real, but the scope and extent of its influence were significantly less than has sometimes been claimed. The overemphasis on French influence on other civil law jurisdictions is partly due to a fundamental assumption that modern criminal codes constituted a break with the past. The question as to whether they truly broke with the past or were merely a degree of reform touches on a difficult issue, namely, the dichotomy between tradition and foreign influences in the codification of criminal law. Scholarship has unfairly ignored this important subject, an oversight that this book remedies.

Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico explores elite notions of crime and criminality from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. In Mexico these notions represented contested areas of the social terrain, places where generalized ideas about criminality transcended the individual criminal act to intersect with larger issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality. It was at this intersection that modern Mexican society bared its soul. Attitudes toward race amalgamation and indios, lower-class lifestyles and läperos, women and sexual deviance, all influenced perceptions of criminality and ultimately determined the fundamental issue of citizenship: who belonged and who did not. The liberal discourse of toleration and human rights, the positivist discourse of order and progress, the revolutionary discourse of social justice and integration sought in turn to disguise the exclusions of modern Mexican society behind a veil of criminality?to proscribe as criminal those activities that criminologists, penologists, and anthropologists clearly linked to marginalized social groups. This book attempts to lift that veil and to gaze, like Josä Guadalupe Posada, at the grinning calavera that it shields.

The book deals with two very important but imprecise terms in contemporary law, namely public policy and public morality. It is commendable that such a comprehensive work about general clauses has been prepared. They are the elements of the common good which refers directly to Article 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The aim of these clauses is to protect the integrity of Polish legal order and the reason why they are applied boils down to the public interest. The clauses refer to the extralegal criteria of a moral, economic or political nature. That is why, for a legal practice, it appears vital that experts contribute to the clarification of their content and meaning as a legal categories. No less important is entrusting or leaving this task to the courts and other legal bodies. These efforts serve to ensure necessary flexibility in applying, in particular, the public policy clause – a safety valve of legal order. prof. Franciszek Longchamps de Bérier, Jagiellonian University in Kraków The theme of the volume and the studies included in it are very interesting and important from a cognitive and applied perspective. The authors of the book represent various academic circles and different legal disciplines, whereas their conclusiveness is an essential value of the presented analyses. Dr hab. Krzysztof Motyka, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland The idea of the authors of the book to discuss the issues of “public policy” and “public morality” as legal clauses in Polish law against the background of legal solutions of the European Union and international law deserves recognition. It efficiently combines the findings of the legal doctrine and the judicial decisions which allows to view these problems not only from the theoretical and legal perspective, but also from a practical angle. The presented definitions, theoretical and legal considerations, as well as the rulings regarding the clauses of “public policy” and “public morality” constitute a starting point for the authors to formulate their own arguments and conclusions de lege lata and de lege ferenda. The authors also skillfully describe the afore-mentioned clauses and demonstrate their close relationship with constitutional axiology, emphasizing their limitative nature and homeostatic role. Dr hab. Paweł Cichoń, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland