A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration

Abstract

This is a book of unusual merit and interest. The author, Dr. Radzinowicz, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, is the Assistant Director of Research in Criminal Science in the Cambridge Faculty of Law. It is the first of a series of volumes in which he proposes to set forth the history of our criminal law and its administration from 1750 onwards, and an examination of his sources and his methods indicates that he has set himself a task whose magnitude and complexity would daunt most scholars. As Lord Macmillan, in the Foreword which he contributes as Chairman of the Pilgrim Trust, points out, the author's conception of what is meant by raw materials is staggering. The examination of decided cases and textbooks alone would be formidable, but Dr. Radzinowicz has already had to consult some 1,250 reports of Commissions and Committees of Inquiry, 800 annual reports and 1,100 volumes of Parliamentary Debates.