Davos Newbies Home
May 17th, 2004
A humane and progressive state 
I spent three days in Venice last week. In the wonderful Cadogan Guides book on Venice, there was this timely passage:
“In truth few states were as humane and progressive: prisoners had a legal right to a lawyer as early as the 970s; a prisoner had to be brought to trial in a month and no more; house arrest was invented for a sick prisoner in 1572; no one could be arrested without sufficient evidence; search warrants could only be issued by committee, and not by a single man; and along with Tuscany, the Republic abolished torture before anyone else, in the early 1700s.”