Enlightenment in the German nations, can only be described as extraordinary during the second half of the XVIIIth Century: amidst persistent wars between the European countries, people were presented with groundbreaking scientific and technical discoveries, and no less stunning advances in social and government sciences that would change their life forever. And yet, in all aspects of the daily life, one finds only, here and there, submission and misery: apart from the very few people from nobility and clergy, apart from the opulent merchants and an handful of educated citizens; the vast...

To present Humanity in its full expression was Schiller's intent in rewriting and adapting, in the form of a novel or a telling according to the spirit of Enlightenment, these legal cases taken from the exhaustive volumes of real life cases compiled by Pitaval. In eight remarkable legal cases which portray the human being in all his erring and excesses, we see the author reinterpreting, in the spirit of a human friendly observer, past legal judgments which call upon the use of newly discovered field such as psychology, as well as new principles which were used to draft laws, in an effort to...