Kenny's Outlines of Criminal Law (originally published as Outlines of Criminal Law) was a leading criminal law textbook published in 19 editions from 1902 to 1966 by Cambridge University Press. It was originally written by the jurist and academic Courtney Stanhope Kenny, and it was updated for the 14th and 15th editions by G. Godfrey Phillips, and then re-written for its 16th to 19th editions by J. W. Cecil Turner.
The work offered a systematic and principled treatment of English criminal law, intended for students and practitioners, and it became one of the standard texts in the field during the first half of the twentieth century.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Kenny, Courtney Stanhope (1847–1930)", Oxford University Press.
History
Development The first thirteen editions (1902–1929) of Outlines were written entirely by Kenny himself.C. S. Kenny, Outlines of Criminal Law, Cambridge University Press, 1902–1929 (title pages of editions 1–13). The full title of the first edition was Outlines of criminal law, based on lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, and in his preface to that edition Kenny explained that the work was a compilation of the lectures he had given over the previous 25 years.
After Kenny's death in 1930, G. Godfrey Phillips revised the 14th and 15th editions as Kenny's Outlines, updating statutory and case references while keeping the original structure.Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 5 (1936), review of the 15th edition revised by G. Godfrey Phillips.
From 1952 to 1966, J. W. Cecil Turner produced the 16th to 19th editions. His 16th edition was described by the Cambridge Law Journal as "an entirely new edition... the book is now his rather than Kenny's".Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 11 (1953), p. 458. Turner reorganized the material on mens rea, homicide, and property offences, and integrated mid-twentieth-century statutory developments.Modern Law Review, Vol. 15 (1952), p. 609. Subsequent editions maintained his structure with minor updates.Cambridge University Press catalogues (1958, 1962, 1966).
Decline
The work lost its dominant status in English legal education between the late 1960s and the 1980s. Turner died in 1968Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 27 (1969), p. 5 (obituary note on Turner). and no successor editor was appointed by Cambridge University Press, leaving the text static.J. H. Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. XI (Oxford University Press, 2010), §12.32.
By the 1970s, there had been extensive statutory reform of the criminal law, which rendered much of the 19th edition obsolete.Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 25 (1967), review of the 19th ed. of Kenny’s Outlines of Criminal Law New textbooks filled the vacuum, including Smith and Hogan's Criminal Law and Glanville Williams’s Textbook of Criminal Law, which provided up-to-date analysis, integration of statutory developments, and discussion of legal policy.J. C. Smith and B. Hogan, Criminal Law (Butterworths, 1965).G. Williams, Textbook of Criminal Law (Stevens & Sons, 1978).
By the early 1980s, Kenny’s Outlines was a historical and bibliographic source rather than a contemporary doctrinal authority.
Editions
Main
Kenny, Courtney Stanhope (1902–1929). Outlines of Criminal Law (1st–13th ed.).
Online reprint
(1962, 2016 reprint). (1962, 2016 reprint)
US editions Webb, James H. (1907). Kenny's Outlines of Criminal Law: Revised and Adapted for American Scholars.
Influence Outlines of Criminal Law established itself as the leading academic text in English criminal law teaching for decades. It helped to shift the subject from a practitioner’s manual to an academic discipline concerned with general principles and moral foundations. Turner’s later editions reflected the movement toward a more analytical and positivist style of legal scholarship. The work’s influence continued in Commonwealth jurisdictions until the rise of newer comprehensive criminal law texts in the 1970s.Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 32 (1954), p. 124.
See also Bibliography of English criminal law Harris's Criminal Law Smith, Hogan and Ormerod's Criminal Law
References