Glanville Williams

Welsh legal scholar

Glanville Llewelyn Williams (15 February 1911 – 10 April 1997) was a Welsh legal scholar who was the Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1978 and the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London, from 1945 to 1955. He has been described as Britain's foremost scholar of criminal law.

Williams was born on 15 February 1911 in Bridgend, Wales. He attended Cowbridge Grammar School (founded in 1608 by Sir Edward Stradling of St. Donat's Castle, Glamorgan) from 1923 to 1927. He obtained a First in law at University College of Wales. He was called to the Bar and became a member of Middle Temple in 1935. He was a Research Fellow from 1936 to 1942 and completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in law at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was examined by the Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, Sir William Searle Holdsworth, who was at the time, a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Holdsworth famously asked whether it had been submitted for an LLD as opposed to a DPhil, as the quality and rigour of the thesis was so great. Throughout his lifetime he also served as an Honorary and Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple; and served as the Professor of Public Law and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London, from 1945 to 1955.

William was a Reader in English Law then Professor of Public Law and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of London from 1945 to 1955. He then moved to the University of Cambridge and was a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a Reader in Law from 1957 to 1965, then Professor of English Law from 1966 to 1968. He then became the Rouse Ball Professor of English Law from 1968 to 1978. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1957. He covered an even wider range of topics in the huge number of articles which, astonishingly, he also found the time to write. It is difficult, indeed, to think of any important legal subject on which at some time he did not have something original and interesting to say. Nor is this all. For taking notes, he invented and patented a new form of shorthand (Speedhand Shorthand, 1952). And with Learning the Law (1945), now in its 11th edition, he wrote a little introductory book about law studies which was, and still remains, indispensable reading for any would be law student. Williams's voluminous and sometimes complicated writings are inspired by two big and simple notions. The first is that the law should be clear, consistent and accessible. The second is that law should be humane. He was a convinced utilitarian, who held that punishment was an evil to be avoided unless there was a good reason for imposing it, and for whom "good reasons" meant the well being of society, not the tenets of religious belief. Hence Leon Radzinowicz's celebrated bon mot about him: "Glanville Williams is the illegitimate child of Jeremy Bentham". These utilitarian beliefs also underlay Williams's efforts as a law reformer, an activity in which he managed to play two roles at once. The first was the "establishment man". He devoted many hours over several decades to serving on a range of official committees, in particular the Criminal Law Revision Committee, of which he was a member from 1959 to 1980. In this capacity he shares the credit for a number of reports which led, among other things, to the decriminalisation of suicide in 1961 and the radical reform and codification of the law of theft in 1968. His second role was that of "radical outsider". Working sometimes with others, sometimes on his own, he was adept at stirring up public opinion over matters where official interest in reform was lacking. He took a major part in the campaign to liberalise the law on abortion, which largely succeeded with the Abortion Act 1967. He was also very active in the campaign to legalise voluntary euthanasia, which has so far largely failed. He was both president of the Abortion Law Reform Association, and a vice president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. In the 1950s he was among the first to draw public attention to the problems children face when giving evidence in sex cases – and was still campaigning on the subject in the 1980s. In 1960 he was the first person publicly to advocate the tape recording of interviews with suspects in police stations; initially condemned as a silly and impractical idea, 25 years later this became almost universal practice. Perhaps his greatest triumph was in 1986, when a well timed article persuaded the House of Lords to rule that a person can be guilty of attempt even where the crime in question was impossible of completion: so over ruling their decision the other way the year before, and expressly over ruling, for the first time ever, their previous decision in a criminal case. Glanville Williams was a respected and innovative teacher. He was also very supportive throughout their careers to a number of his junior colleagues. Although a kind man, however, he was rather shy, and not a great socialiser outside the circle of his family. He was brought up in a pious Congregationalist family in South Wales, and much of his background stayed with him. Notwithstanding his great eminence, he remained to the end of his days a quiet spoken, modest, gentle, serious minded Welshman. Although an agnostic for most of his life he knew his Bible, and the use of biblical phrases was instinctive to him. "He smote him hip and thigh", he once said, describing an article an American had written criticising Sigmund Freud.

Academic honours were heaped upon him, culminating in 1995 in a Doctorate of Letters honoris causa from Cambridge. During his lifetime it was widely rumoured that he had never been offered a knighthood because he had been staunchly pacifist before the Second World War, and during it a conscientious objector. The truth, however, is that he was offered one and declined it; partly from modesty, and partly because he thought it incongruous that a man who had refused to wield a bayonet should theoretically bear a sword. The Jesus College, University of Cambridge Glanville Williams Society meets each year and is attended by over 600 leading English lawyers. In 1976, he was famously impersonated by Campbell McComas, an Australian comedian, at a hoax lecture at Monash University, Melbourne. Many people who knew Williams personally were reportedly fooled by the hoax. Hundreds and hundreds attended, and the lecture ended with the words: "thank you for having me, but you have been had."