James Fitzjames Stephen - Judicial Career

Judicial Career

There were transient hopes of an Evidence Act being brought before Parliament, and in 1878 the Digest of Criminal Law became a Ministerial Bill. This was referred to a judicial commission, which included Stephen. The revised Bill was introduced in 1879 and 1880. It dealt with procedure as well as substantive law, and provided for a court of criminal appeal (though after several years of judicial experience Stephen changed his mind as to the wisdom of this). However, no substantial progress was made during that session of Parliament. In 1883 the part relating to procedure was brought in separately, and went to the grand committee on law, who found there was not time to deal with it satisfactorily in the course of the session. Criminal appeal has since (1907) been dealt with; otherwise nothing has been done with either part of the draft code since. The historical materials which Stephen had long been collecting took permanent shape the same year (1883) as the History of the Criminal Law of England. A projected Digest of the Law of Contract (which would have been much fuller than the Indian Code) fell through for want of time. Thus none of Stephen's own plans of English codification took effect. The Parliament of Canada used Stephen's principles to codify its criminal law in 1892 as the Criminal Code of Canada.