God Arises
Religion and Society
~ 418 ~
and change is one of the most urgent needs of law
today
,
(The Growth of Law).
As Roscoe Pound puts it
in his
Interpretation of Legal History
(p. 1), the law
should be stable, but not rigid, and there has to be a
balance between the two forces. Philosophers may
have made mammoth efforts to achieve this
balance, by reconciling the dual necessities of
stability and flexibility, but recent history has
shown what lopsidedness can be the result. The
long established idea that punishment should be
inflicted, not only to deter the offender from
committing further criminal acts, but to discourage
others with similar propensities, was one of the
most time-honored and hallowed traditions, and its
being tampered with has yielded highly dubious
results.
The first notable person who advocated mitigation
of the punishment of criminals was Cesare Beccaria
(1738-1794), an Italian expert in criminology. A
great deal of research has subsequently been carried
out in this field, the upshot being that many experts
have come round to the view that the committing of
a crime is not an “intentional event”, and that the
underlying causes must be looked for biological
