Principle of legality in criminal law

The principle of legality in criminal law^[1] was developed in the eighteenth century by the Italian criminal lawyer Cesare Beccaria and holds that no one can be convicted of a crime without a previously published legal text which clearly describes the crime (Latin: nulla poena sine lege, lit. 'no punishment without law'). This principle is accepted and codified in modern democratic states as a basic requirement of the rule of law. It has been described as "one of the most 'widely held value-judgement[s] in the entire history of human thought ' ".^[2]