Professor Tony Smith (1947-2025)

It is with great sadness that the Faculty announces the death of Professor Tony Smith (A.T.H. Smith) on 19 August. Professor Smith was lecturer and fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 1972-1981 and 1990-1996 and remained a Life Fellow there until his death. He became Professor of Criminal and Public Laws in the Faculty in 1996, a post he held until 2006. During that time he was Chair of the Law Faculty.

After his time in Cambridge, Tony was Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Laws at Victoria University at Wellington. He returned to Cambridge for a stint as Goodhart Professor of Legal Science in 2015-2016.

Professor Smith was a Barrister and Solicitor of the New Zealand High Court, and was made an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple in 2001.

Professor Smith was a leading writer on the criminal law and criminal justice. His initial interest was criminal law in relation to the law of property, on which he wrote a big book entitled The Protection of Property through the Criminal Law in 1994. But by then the main thrust of his scholarship was directed towards those areas where the criminal law and public law intersect: free speech, media law, police powers and public order. In 1987 he published The Offences Against Public Order, inspired by the Public Order Act 1986. He then joined forces with the practitioners Anthony Arlidge and David Eady, whose book on contempt of court became Arlidge, Eady and Smith On Contempt from the 2nd edition onwards: a comprehensive work that is widely recognised as the authoritative text.

In 2023 a Festschrift to mark his retirement was published by the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review. The quality and range of the many contributions reflect the affection and esteem in which Tony was widely held. To law students and would-be law students his name is better known for completely different work. From the 12th edition onwards, he was the editor of Glanville Williams’s popular introduction to law studies, Learning the Law. He was a founding member of the Cambridge Law Faculty’s online criminal discussion group, and remained so for many years after his return to New Zealand.

Professor Smith features in an entry in the Cambridge Law Faculty Eminent Scholars Archive, including a bibliography, conversations about his career, and a collection of photographs.