[6] He was a Research Fellow from 1936 to 1942 and completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in law at St John's College, Cambridge,[6] where he was examined by the Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, Sir William Searle Holdsworth, who was at the time, a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
[citation needed] Holdsworth famously asked whether it had been submitted for an LLD as opposed to a DPhil, as the quality and rigour of the thesis was so great.
Williams's Textbook of Criminal Law (London: Steven & Sons, 1983) is on a United States list of the most cited legal books.
His groundbreaking Criminal Law: The General Part (Steven & Sons, London, 1961) is a classic still widely read and cited.
The House of Lords held: "it was immaterial that the appellant was unsure of the exact nature of the substance in his possession in that in any event he believed that he was dealing with either heroin or cannabis the importation of which was prohibited."
The language in which he criticises the decision in Anderton v Ryan is not conspicuous for its moderation, but it would be foolish, on that account, not to recognise the force of the criticism and churlish not to acknowledge the assistance I have derived from it.
[11]John Spencer, summed up his massive contribution in 1997: Nowadays Williams is best known as a writer on criminal law, where his fame rests on four books, the influence of which has been enormous.
The Proof of Guilt (1955) is a comparative account of the rules by which criminal cases are tried in England and Wales, penetrating in its analysis of the merits of our system as well as its defects.
In The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law (1957), Williams criticised Christian, especially Roman Catholic, opposition to contraception, artificial insemination, sterilisation, abortion, suicide and euthanasia.
Hence Leon Radzinowicz's celebrated bon mot about him: "Glanville Williams is the illegitimate child of Jeremy Bentham".
These utilitarian beliefs also underlay Williams's efforts as a law reformer, an activity in which he managed to play two roles at once.
In this capacity he shares the credit for a number of reports which led, among other things, to the decriminalisation of suicide in 1961 and the radical reform and codification of the law of theft in 1968.
In the 1950s he was among the first to draw public attention to the problems children face when giving evidence in sex cases – and was still campaigning on the subject in the 1980s.
In 1960 he was the first person publicly to advocate the tape-recording of interviews with suspects in police stations; initially condemned as a silly and impractical idea, 25 years later this became almost universal practice.
[3] The Jesus College, University of Cambridge Glanville Williams Society meets each year and is attended by over 600 leading English lawyers.