French Penal Code of 1791

The French Penal Code of 1791 was France's first penal code, adopted by the Constituent Assembly between 25 September and 6 October 1791 during the French Revolution. Drawing on Enlightenment thought, particularly the writings of Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria, it built criminal law around the principle of legality, the idea that no one may be convicted of a crime unless a previously published law had clearly defined both the offense and its penalty. It established a graduated scale of punishments, addressed offenses from theft to murder, and notably decriminalized sodomy, making France the first Western European state since antiquity to do so; it was replaced by the Napoleonic Penal Code of 1810 but remained highly influential on later French criminal law. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/