Baratta, Alessandro (1933–2002)

Alessandro Baratta was born in Rome and died in Saarland. Having completed his academic training at Rome's La Sapienza Faculty of Law, Baratta began specialized studies in Germany, namely in Freiburg, Göttingen, and Saarbrücken. Here, he became familiar with German penal theory and the philosophical circle of the early 1960s: German existentialism, the Kantian spirit, the debate on Marxism and phenomenology, the rebirth of natural law, and the revival of critical social theory. In those years, he published many important books on legal theory and the science of penal law.

Baratta's most refined and mature work from the 1960s is Natura del fatto e giustizia materiale (Nature of Fact and Material Justice) (1968), in which he repositioned the debate on “Natur der Sache” within a dialectical-realistic ...