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Consider this excerpt from Beccaria’s work on criminal law (…

Consider this excerpt from Beccaria’s work on criminal law (From Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, E. D. Ingraham, trans. Philadelphia: H. Nicklin, 1819): The torture of a criminal during the course of his trial is a cruelty consecrated by custom in most nations. It is used with an intent either to make him confess his crime, or to explain some contradiction into which he had been led during his examination, or discover his accomplices, or for some kind of metaphysical and incomprehensible purgation of infamy, or, finally, in order to discover other crimes of which he is not accused, but of which he may be guilty. No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of a citizen so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? This dilemma is frequent. Either he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary. If he be not guilty, you torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent whose crime has not been proved. Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment. According to this excerpt, what type of punishment does the most to deter crime?

Consider this excerpt from Beccaria’s work on criminal law (…

Consider this excerpt from Beccaria’s work on criminal law (From Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, E. D. Ingraham, trans. Philadelphia: H. Nicklin, 1819): The torture of a criminal during the course of his trial is a cruelty consecrated by custom in most nations. It is used with an intent either to make him confess his crime, or to explain some contradiction into which he had been led during his examination, or discover his accomplices, or for some kind of metaphysical and incomprehensible purgation of infamy, or, finally, in order to discover other crimes of which he is not accused, but of which he may be guilty. No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of a citizen so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? This dilemma is frequent. Either he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary. If he be not guilty, you torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent whose crime has not been proved. Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment. According to this excerpt, what type of punishment does the most to deter crime?

Consider this excerpt from Rousseau’s The Social Contract: S…

Consider this excerpt from Rousseau’s The Social Contract: So that the social pact will not become meaningless words, it tacitly [silently] includes this commitment, which alone gives power to the others: Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to obey it by the whole body politic, which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be free. According to Rousseau, the ideal society is one in which