Sir John Cyril Smith (15 January 1922 – 14 February 2003), born Barnard Castle, County Durham, was an English legal academic. Smith was an authority on English criminal law and the philosophy of criminal liability. Together with Brian Hogan he was the author of Smith & Hogan's Criminal Law, which became the leading doctrinal text on criminal law in England and Wales. The textbook has been used as persuasive authority on crimes prosecuted in the law courts of England and Wales and elsewhere in the common law world. In 1998, Lord Bingham praised Smith; "whom most would gladly hail as the outstanding criminal lawyer of our time."
Early life and education
Smith was educated at St Mary's Grammar School in Darlington. Brian Hogan, with whom he authored Smith and Hogan's Criminal Law, attended the same school. Smith won a scholarship to attend the University of Oxford to read history, but chose not to take it up, instead leaving school to join his father's engineering business. Smith then enrolled in the British Army, serving in the Royal Artillery during World War II, rising to the rank of Captain. It was whilst in the army that Smith developed an interest in the law; In 1977 he became an Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. Andrew Ashworth says Smith was 'instrumental' in creating a 'formidable reputation' for the University of Nottingham in teaching law.
During the 1960s Smith was a co-opted member of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, being appointed member in the late 1970s. Smith was an advocate for a criminal code of England and Wales (an English Criminal Code) working on a draft criminal code in the early 1980s, which was adopted by the Law Commission in 1989.
Smith was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 1973. He was made QC in 1973 and knighted in 1993 for 'services to legal education.'