THE ROMAN ROOTS OF MINORS’ CRIMINAL LIABILITY

The impubes’s delict liability, in the classic period, is subordinated to being doli or culpae capax; two decemviral provi-sions, instead, established a less severe sanction with respect to pubes in case of impubes’s criminal behavior regardless from assessment about their actual ability to commit crime. Some textual clues allow us to speculate on the historical event that determined this evolution whose goal stands as a fundament of our current regulations, where an age range is also expected, characterized from an absolute presumption of not-imputability to the next one (that a recent proposal of law would tend to turn down, bringing it closer to the ages of pubertati proximi) where the imputability depends on the ability to understand and want the subject.