Paul, knight von Feuerbach

Paul, knight von Feuerbach (born Nov. 14, 1775, Hainichen, near Jena, Thuringia [now in Germany]—died May 29, 1833, Frankfurt am Main) was a jurist noted for his reform of criminal law in Germany.

Feuerbach received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1795. He was appointed to the Bavarian Ministry of Justice in 1805 and prepared a penal code for Bavaria (effective from 1813) that was distinguished by its precise definitions and classifications of crimes. This code, together with the Code Pénal (1810) of Napoleonic France, served as a model for the criminal law of other European nations for several decades. Feuerbach secured (1806) the abolition of torture in Bavarian criminal proceedings. Later, he was second president of the Court of Appeal at Bamberg (1814–17) and first president of the appellate court at Ansbach (1817–33).

Feuerbach’s Lehrbuch des gemeinen in Deutschland gültigen peinlichen Rechts (1801; “Textbook of Criminal Law Generally Applied in Germany”) remained the leading law textbook in Germany for half a century. Before Feuerbach’s reforms, the administration of justice in Germany was distinguished by two characteristics: judges’ arbitrary disregard of written law and the blending of the judicial and executive offices. Feuerbach, using as his chief weapon the Revision der Grundbegriffe (1799; “Revision of the Basic Assumption”), achieved the recognition of the principle of nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (“no crime and no punishment unless provided by [statutory] law”), by which the power of German judges was curtailed. Although Feuerbach protested against vindictive punishment, he promulgated a “psychological-coercive,” or intimidation, theory of penal law; in his view, punishment should be sufficient to deter potential lawbreakers. In other works he criticized the jury system and, believing that secrecy is inimical to justice, urged publicity for all court actions.