Metaphor of cruelty. The death penalty from the Marquis de Beccaria to the present

The cruelty metaphor deals with three sets of issues.

• The first on the conformation of the modern legal culture by the denunciation of the cruelty of the penalties and of the same death penalty that the Marquis de Beccaria coined, now on the 250th anniversary of the publication of the Treaty.
• The second, on the concept of the cruelty of punishments and the prolegomena of a theory of cruelty.
• Finally, the current perspectives of the abolition are addressed from the consideration as ius cogens of the safeguards and the proscription of cruel and inhuman punishments by articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which will be the field of discussion on capital punishment and its universal abolition in the coming years.