The reception of positivism in spainpedro dorado montero

Résumé

The current thesis focuses in one of Spain’s most relevant authors: Pedro Dorado Montero. Acting as a bridge between the criminal law conceptions of the 19th and 20th centuries, Dorado Montero offered a very unique, original theory: the Derecho protector de los criminales (Protective Law of the Criminals). Towards the end of the 19th century, a clash between the penal neoclassical theories and the new positivist theories took place. As a result, the hegemony of the old school was contested. To this respect, Dorado Montero’s scholarly career, the context in which he lived and the several European and other international influences he received are analysed. Therefore, Dorado Montero’s role in the introduction of positivism within Spain and the success experienced by the aforementioned trend are extensively addressed. Furthermore, he was often said to belong to the Spanish correccionalismo movement. However, his iusphilosophical and criminal thought seemed to lay closer to positivism than to neoclassical postulates. Even if the debate has been oversimplified in terms of freewill vs. determinism, the approach of this thesis aims at challenging the accuracy of the ‘eclectic’ label which the traditional historiography has attributed to him. Finally, the existence of a ‘Doradian positivism’ is assessed. Despite the interest that such author has grown in the last decades, Dorado Montero is, somehow, still left aside. Notwithstanding that, his Derecho protector de los criminales was also describing the criminal law of the future, hugely sieged nowadays by the new neurological, medical, psychological and genetic findings.