Gian Domenico Romagnosi was born in Salsomaggiore, near Parma, and studied at the Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza. Through the teaching of Giovanni Antonio Comi, a follower of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff, Romagnosi became acquainted with the doctrines of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and with the writings of Charles Bonnet, which had a decisive influence on him. After his graduation in 1786, he conceived his best-known work, Genesi del diritto penale (Genesis of Penal Law; completed in 1789 and published in Pavia in 1791), in which he claimed that the fundamental right to punish belongs to society. Society alone, and not the individual, can mete out "that amount of evil that is necessary to preserve the well-being of our fellow men" and can oppose the "criminal impulse" with a "moral counterimpulse."

Named mayor of Trent in 1791, Romagnosi remained in that office for ten years...