ABSTRACT
James Fitzjames Stephen’s Digest of Criminal Law (1877) is a landmark in the history of criminal law in the British world. Inspired by the ambitious law codes proposed by colonial legislatures, especially in India, Stephen hoped to restate and, ultimately, reform criminal law in the imperial metropole. Stephen would be disappointed. Parliament quickly cooled on codification, which struck many as unnecessary, complicated and even politically suspect. The Digest, however, had a rich afterlife in Britain’s colonies, where it inspired criminal law codes in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. Stephen’s work remains a touchstone in contemporary debates about codification, where his draft code often serves as an exemplar. This chapter considers the nineteenth-century politics of codification, including the promise and peril of embracing a legal form coded as colonial, or otherwise foreign, during a period of rapid social, economic and political change in the British empire.
