Principle of legality in French criminal law information
French legal principle
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The principle of legality in French criminal law holds that no one may be convicted of a criminal offense unless a previously published legal text sets out in clear and precise wording the constituent elements of the offense and the penalty which applies to it.[1][2]
(Latin:Nullum crimen, nulla pœna sine lege, in other words, "no crime, no penalty, without a law").[3]
The principle of legality[1][2][a] (French: principe de légalité) is one of the most fundamental principles of French criminal law, and goes back to the Penal Code of 1791 adopted during the French Revolution,[citation needed] and before that, was developed by Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria and by Montesquieu.[4] The principle has its origins in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which endows it with constitutional force and limits the conditions in which citizens may be punished for infractions.
^ abCite error: The named reference Dalloz-Art.111-3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abLegifrance, Penal code, 111-3.
^The Principle of Legality, RAIS Conference Proceedings – The 11th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences, 20 December 2018,
Daniel Grădinaru, Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University
^The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law, John Bessler, 37 Hamline J. Pub. L. & Pol'y 1 (2017)
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
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