Luis Arroyo Zapatero

Luis Arroyo Zapatero (born 1951) is a Spanish legal scholar and academic administrator. He is professor emeritus of criminal law at the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM), where he served as the first elected rector from 1988 to 2003 and later became honorary rector. He founded the university's Institute of European and International Criminal Law and directed it until 2022. Since 2002, he has been president of the International Society of Social Defence.

Arroyo Zapatero was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France in 2019.

Education and academic career

Born in Valladolid, Arroyo Zapatero studied law at the University of Valladolid. From 1975 to 1977 he pursued doctoral studies at the University of Cologne with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service. He received his doctorate in law from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1980. His thesis examined criminal responsibility in occupational accidents.

He taught criminal law at the Complutense University of Madrid in the early 1980s. In 1985 he joined the newly established law faculty of the University of Castilla–La Mancha in Albacete and became its founding dean. He was elected rector of the university in 1988 and was re-elected in 1991, 1995 and 1999, remaining in office until 2003.

The abolition of capital punishment is a prominent theme in his academic and public work. He has studied abolition in the context of international human-rights law and the legal and political factors that lead states to abandon the death penalty. In 2011 he spoke at the Collège de France on the abolition of capital punishment in international criminal law. His 2016 chapter “Les chemins de l'abolition de la peine de mort: Acteurs, facteurs et processus” examined the participants, legal instruments and political conditions involved in abolition.

International roles and honours

Arroyo Zapatero has chaired the International Society of Social Defence since 2002.

On 30 September 2019, the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques elected him a corresponding member in its Morals and Sociology section, succeeding Évelyne Sullerot.

He has received honorary doctorates from universities and institutes in Europe and Latin America, including the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) in 2004, Valahia University of Târgoviște in 2009 and Mexico's National Institute of Criminal Sciences in 2016. His other distinctions include the Gold Medal of Castilla–La Mancha in 2006 and the Cross of Honour of Spain's Order of St Raymond of Peñafort in 2007.

Selected works