This timely collection explores how political ideas and beliefs influenced the nature, content and application of criminal law and justice under Fascism, National Socialism, and other authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. Bringing together expert legal historians from four continents, the collection’s sixteen chapters examine aspects of criminal law and related jurisprudential and criminological questions in the context of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Norway, apartheid South Africa, Francoist Spain, and the authoritarian regimes of Brazil, Romania and Japan.

Based on original archival, doctrinal and theoretical research, the collection offers new critical perspectives on issues of systemic identity and the foundational role of criminal law; processes of state repression and the activities of criminal courts and lawyers; and ideological aspects of, and tensions in, substantive criminal law.