This purpose of this paper is to analyze historically the two kinds of arguments against the jury that Roberto Lyra tries to refute. Instead of seeking the distant origins of the Lyra's arguments, which could be traced back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, sought to privilege a more immediate historical context, namely the debates about the role of criminal legal science. While the refutation of the "técnico-científicos" arguments reveals an internal divergence within the criminological positivism, the opposition to the "técnico-jurídicos" arguments is linked to the struggles of Lyra's criticism against the tecnicismo jurídico-penal, that ascribe to the precise application of the law a role that put into question the modus operandi of a significative part of the "bachaleresca" legal culture inherited from the nineteenth century.
History of Law; Jury; Criminal Legal Science; Roberto Lyra