Professor Sir John Smith

John Cyril Smith, law scholar: born Barnard Castle, Co Durham 15 January 1922; called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn 1950, Honorary Bencher 1977; Assistant Lecturer in Law, Nottingham University 1950-52, Lecturer 1952-56, Reader 1956-57, Head of Department of Law 1956-74, 1977-86, Professor of Law 1958-87 (Emeritus), Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1973-77; President, Society of Public Teachers of Law 1979-80; married 1957 Shirley Walters (died 2000; two sons, one daughter); died Nottingham 14 February 2003

Sir John Smith was one of the leading academic lawyers of the second half of the 20th century. He made his mark in several areas of the law, including the law of contract and the law of evidence, but it was in the field of criminal law that his most distinguished and enduring contributions to the development of English law were made.

Having read Law at Downing College, Cambridge, after leaving the Army in 1947, Smith joined the Law Department at Nottingham University in 1950. He was promoted to professor in 1957, and in the following 30 years was instrumental in establishing Nottingham's formidable reputation for teaching law. Smith's personal contributions to this were legion – the care, detail and clarity of his teaching, his eminence as a legal scholar, his sympathetic nurturing of younger academic colleagues, and above all his leadership by example.

On his retirement in 1987 he could look back with pride on a department regarded as one of the top law schools, and which had produced some of the leading lawyers (practising and academic) of the age. But look back he did not: Smith remained a part of the Law department and was given the title of "Professor Emeritus in Residence" in recognition of his continuing contribution. From his "retirement" until his death he went into the department most working days, continuing to write and always available to discuss legal issues with his younger colleagues.

Smith's first major publication, as J.C. Smith, with his colleague J.A.C. Thomas, was A Casebook on Contract (1957), based on the American style of teaching law and combining extracts from decided cases, commentary and problems. The book was and is a great success, having achieved 11 editions so far. As a criminal lawyer Smith first came to international scholarly attention with an article in the Harvard Law Review in 1957 on the law of attempts, in which he crossed swords with the other great criminal lawyer of the time, Glanville Williams, whom he held in great respect.

He soon began work on a project that was to have a profound influence, a modern textbook on criminal law. After working on this for some time he was joined by his then Nottingham colleague Brian Hogan, and Criminal Law appeared under their joint authorship in 1965. This was a momentous event: here was a book that combined original research, detailed analysis of statutes and case-law, and a critique informed by academic writings. It became the standard textbook on criminal law in the universities, and also served as a model for textbooks in other fields of the law. It was also one of the first textbooks to be cited regularly in the courts, both by counsel and by judges.

After Hogan's untimely death in 1996, Smith took charge of the ninth and 10th editions of "Smith and Hogan" himself, the 10th edition having been published only last summer.

Smith's main contributions came through his deep understanding of criminal law and a supreme analytical ability. He was much concerned to identify and to criticise anomalies, inconsistencies and absurdities in the law. He strongly favoured subjective principles of criminal responsibility and argued strenuously against the intrusion of objective standards into the definition of recklessness and the requirement of "reasonable grounds" before an argument based on mistaken belief could succeed.

Although he was gentle in manners, and would always point out quietly when one was in error rather than drawing public attention to it, he was firm in his views and quite outspoken when his gentle prodding of the judiciary fell on deaf ears. His principal instrument was his case commentaries in the monthly Criminal Law Review, starting in the mid-1950s and continuing until his death. These commentaries became a major resource in English criminal law, and they were influential in the courts.

When they were not influential enough, however, there was no holding him back. Exasperated by a sequence of inept decisions of the House of Lords on criminal matters in the 1980s, Smith began his commentary on the criminal attempts decision in Anderton v Ryan thus:

The House of Lords has done it again. Confusion and uncertainty has been substituted for the orderly and simple solution of this longstanding problem intended by Parliament.

Senior judges did not like this directness, and Lord Justice Lawton delivered a public rebuke, but Smith was unrepentant. He continued to write critically when he thought the occasion warranted it. And he was frequently invited to lecture to the judges on the criminal law, which he did regularly until his death.

Perhaps Smith's most lasting contribution is the draft criminal code. He led a small team of academics that began work in the early 1980s and produced a draft code in 1985. This was subsequently adopted by the Law Commission, after further consultation, in 1989. The codification project embodied many of Smith's ideals, since it promised greater clarity and consistency in the criminal law, a single source for the major offences, the removal of many cumbersome old statutes and the introduction of statute into some areas that remain governed by the common law.

It was to his constant dismay that politicians gave low priority to the criminal code, preferring to devote legislative time to new populist offences while leaving in place statutes such as the Offences Against the Person Act 1841, which to this day governs (Smith would say, blights) the law on personal violence. He took every opportunity to urge legislative adoption of the code, and worked tirelessly with the Law Commission to this end.

Andrew Ashworth