Jean Servais Guillaume Nypels
Jean Servais Guillaume Nypels, a criminal lawyer, was rector from 1852 to 1855. During his rectorship, the University of Liège was abuzz with debates demanding the abolition of combined juries, imposed by the organic law of 1849, which required Liège students to be examined jointly by two professors, one from the State University of Liège and another, appointed by the government, from a free university.
Born in Maastricht in 1803 and died in Liège in 1886, Jean Servais Guillaume Nypels is considered one of the most eminent specialists in Belgian criminal law. Educated at the University of Louvain, he began a career as a magistrate, which he interrupted in 1833 to join the University of Liège as an extraordinary professor in the Faculty of Law (1835).
He then succeeded Pierre-Joseph Destriveaux in the chair of criminal law and criminal instruction. He wrote a critical edition of Adolphe Chauveau and Faustin Hélie's Théorie du code pénal, a four-volume work on Belgium's criminal legislation and a masterly interpretation of its penal code.
As early as 1841, he was called upon by the government to play an active role in the preparatory work leading up to the 1867 reform of Belgian criminal law. He also took part in the drafting of a revised code of criminal instruction, notably by writing the preliminary draft of the law on preventive detention (1874).
A member of numerous Belgian and foreign learned societies, he was elected correspondent of the class of letters at the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts, before becoming its director in 1880. During his tenure as rector of the University of Liège (1852-1855), he twice returned to his favorite subjects, disserting on the repressive system of the new Belgian penal code in 1853 and on a question of legal history concerning the criminal ordinances of Philippe II (1855).
Un principe nouveau, l’amendement des condamnés, préside désormais à la confection des lois pénales chez tous les peuples civilisés. La société ne punit plus comme autrefois pour se venger ou pour intimider par l’appareil des supplices. Une mission plus noble et plus difficile lui est imposée, elle doit chercher à réformer.
It is said of him
"His teaching, like his writings, was inspired [...] by generous sentiments of humanity and compassion for the guilty, sentiments which are a credit to our time and which he found at the bottom of his heart. Without ignoring the demands of justice, he wanted a penal system that would encourage a return to goodness and the amendment of the condemned, and if, in reconciling these principles, he may have overstepped the bounds of truth, it was undoubtedly through an excess of indulgence, not an excess of severity" (Charles Loomans, "Nypels (Jean-Servais-Guillaume)", Biographie nationale, t. XVI, 1901, col. 23).
Illustration : Lambert Salme, À Monsieur J.S. G. Nypels, Professeur ordianire à l'Université de Liège, lithographie,, 1873, Musée Wittert ULiège, inv. 2935
