Highly regarded international legal scholar and academic leader farewelled

The Faculty of Law marks the passing of Tony Smith by reflecting on his remarkable life and enduring contribution to the legal profession.

Professor Tony Smith, former Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Law at Victoria University of Wellington, died in August.

Te Kauhanganui Tātai Ture—Faculty of Law was deeply saddened by Tony's passing.

Originally from Christchurch, Tony studied law at the University of Canterbury, where he went on to become a junior lecturer. After a brief stint at the Treasury in Wellington, Tony made the move to Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University in 1972 as a Tapp scholar. While initially hating being away from his home in New Zealand, Tony was ultimately seduced by Cambridge’s academic energy, architecture, and cultural opportunities, and the opportunities it presented to mingle with great thinkers from a vast range of academic disciplines.

It was there he met and began working with Glanville Williams, who has been described as the most notable British jurist of the 20th century. Glanville recognised Tony’s talent, inviting him to collaborate on a book dealing with specific criminal offences. Tony was quickly elevated from research student to Fellow and College Lecturer in Law.

Tony moved in 1981 to a readership at Durham University, then to a professorship at Reading University in 1986. His career as a renowned legal writer flourished in this time, and he gained first-rate administrative experience too, acting as Dean of Reading from 1998 to 1990.

Prior to this time, Tony’s writing was primarily focused on property offences. But this period saw him develop his interest in broader topics, including pardons and the prerogative of mercy, immunity from prosecution, and the unfortunate effects of judicial law-making in criminal law. This scholarship was recognised with the award of a PhD from Cambridge in 1985, and in 1987 he published his first major book, The Offences Against Public Order.

In 1990 Tony returned to Cambridge, initially as a university lecturer, and in quick succession was promoted to a readership and then to a professorship in Criminal and Public Laws. He was subsequently appointed as Chair of Cambridge University’s Law Faculty in 1998.

The fruits of Tony’s earlier collaboration with Glanville Williams eventually saw the light of day in 1994 when Tony published a 1,037-page book, The Protection of Property through the Criminal Law. After Glanville’s death, Tony continued their collaborative work by updating and producing the next five editions of Glanville’s Learning the Law.

Tony’s scholarship was later directed towards areas at the intersection of criminal and public law, including media law, free speech, public order, and police powers. He began co-authoring Arlidge, Eady and Smith on Contempt in 1999; this book is regarded in Britain as the authoritative text on the subject—and continued to work on subsequent editions until his death. Meanwhile, he practised part-time at the Bar, and was made an honorary bencher at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, while still finding time to publish important articles on various significant criminal law issues.

During Tony’s first stint in Cambridge, his son Tim was born. Although Tony’s relationship with Tim’s mother, Gill, ended just two years later, the two remained firm friends even after Gill and Tim’s return to New Zealand in 1989. Tim and Tony also remained close but, Tim says, “I really got to know Dad as an adult, when I came back to Britain to do my LLM at Cambridge.” He explains, “I lived in his house in London for about seven years, so he was very much a big part of my life from when I was about 22.”

Tim says his dad was a very warm, quick-witted, and affable character.

He was a close friend to a lot of people—myself included—and was very well liked. When he was at Cambridge he hosted many, many New Zealanders who were visiting for academic purposes, and people had an enormous amount of affection for him.

Tim, who also practises law, and his wife Nicole Moreham had been living and working in the United Kingdom. When they decided to move back to Wellington to raise their family (and for Nicole to take up a role teaching torts and media law at Vic), Tony was very keen to join them. So in 2006, after 37 years away, he returned to New Zealand to take up a postion that had serendipitously become available as Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Law at Victoria.

Nicole, whose own career has followed a very similar path to Tony’s—she also studied law at Canterbury University and was a Tapp scholar and ultimately Fellow of Law at Caius—says her father-in-law was a good Dean who was very focused on excellence and on letting academics get on with what they did best.

“Tony’s mana as an academic and quiet civility set a tone for law school interactions. He was collegial in his DNA—he dealt with difficult academic matters by making sure that people were talking to each other,” she says. “I would often leave the building on Friday night to the sound of laughter coming from Friday night drinks he shared without fail with Gordon Stewart, Carol Sorenson, Julie-Mary Boles de Boer, and the other non-academic staff he valued so much.”

Another former colleague, Gordon Stewart, who was deputy dean during Tony’s tenure leading the Faculty, says he feels privileged and honoured to have worked closely with Tony, who became a close friend.

“With his typical modesty, and often behind the scenes and with no attendant fanfare, Tony achieved much for the Law Faculty at Victoria—much more, I believe, than that for which he has been given credit. And he achieved it quietly. No confrontation, no lines in the sand, no ultimatums, no dramas; purely amicable discussion, logical reasoning, and sound collegiality,” says Gordon.

“Aside from his contributions as Dean, Tony was a delightful colleague and friend. His love for and loyalty to his two homes—New Zealand and Cambridge—never waned, and the friendships he made in both lasted a lifetime. He had a hugely enviable (and entertaining) knowledge of a wide and eclectic range of subjects, and a wonderful—and wonderfully dry—sense of humour."

Time spent in his company was always—always—time well spent. I, and I am sure many others, regret that the time has come to an end.

Outside of his professional life, Tony’s interests included music (his taste ranged from high-brow classical to ABBA), wine, architecture, travel, cookery, and sport—his knowledge of cricket has been described as ‘prodigious’, and he represented Canterbury in the sport as a teenager. Tim says he asked his father just a couple of months before his death if there was anything he’d still like to achieve—without missing a beat, Tony replied, “play for the Black Caps at the Basin Reserve.”

Tony was genuinely interested in people, and is remembered as a kind leader and a loyal friend. He was profoundly committed to the law and to academic endeavours, and demonstrated a gift for combining his intellectual strengths with a talent for leading people. He commanded the respect and affection of students, colleagues, and the wider law profession.

Tony died on 19 August 2025, at home in Wellington. In recognition of his many great achievements, a tribute was lodged in New Zealand’s Parliament, and on the other side the world the flags of Caius and the Middle Temple were lowered in his honour.

Tony will be remembered as an outstanding lawyer, scholar, and teacher, whose deeply felt influence spans the world and multiple generations of legal minds.

Read more from V.Alum December 2025