The Squire Law Library and the Faculty of Law are pleased to announce that an interview with Professor ATH 'Tony' Smith has been added to the Eminent Scholars Archive.
Professor Smith is the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science for the academic year 2015-16. He is currently Professor of Law at Victoria University, New Zealand, having stepped down as Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean in May 2015, and a Barrister and Honorary Bencher (Middle Temple).
Professor Smith was interviewed on 19th January 2016 in the Squire Law Library. This is the first of two interviews, and covers his early life and career. A second conversation, concentrating on his published works, is planned for mid-year.
Professor Smith was born and grew up in New Zealand, where he attended high school and university in Christchurch, before coming over to Gonville and Caius College in the early 1970s. He talks of the influential figures in his early life, including John Weir, the biographer and friend of the renowned New Zealand poet James K Baxter, as well as fellow graduates at Caius.
Professor Smith subsequently held academic posts at the universities of Durham (Reader) and Reading (Professor), before being appointed to a chair of Criminal and Public Laws at Cambridge in 1996. The interview includes insights into the development, inter alia, of his involvement in the early use of computers in faculty administration, as well as his interests in criminal law, and aspects of policing methods during public demonstrations. He also gives details of his current teaching and research activities as the incumbent of the Goodhart chair.
This is the tenth in the collection of interviews with the Goodhart professors, previous interviewees being Professor Martti Koskenniemi, Sir Robin Auld, Justice Paul Finn, Professor Leslie Zines, Professor Jane Stapleton, Professor Peter Cane, and Professor Spyridon Flogaitis, Professor Gerald Postema, and Professor David Dyzenhaus.
The Eminent Scholars Archive is available to listen, or subscribe to, via the University Streaming Media Service and iTunes U.