Codification, Macaulay and the Indian Penal Code: The Legacies and Modern Challenges of Criminal Law Reform

The Indian Penal Code (IPC) which was largely the work of Thomas Babington Macaulay, was the first codification of criminal law in the British Empire, and is the longest serving criminal code in the common law world. Following its enactment, the IPC was adopted in other British colonies in South Asia. To mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Code, sixteen international experts were invited to discuss its legacy within common law countries. This resulting book comprises not only a description of the general principles found in the IPC, but a consideration of modern views and developments on those principles and related doctrinal issues, and proposals for reforming the IPC in the light of those views and developments and within the spirit of Macaulay's original draft code. Directly applicable to South Asian jurisdictions, the matters examined in this book are also directly relevant to criminal law reform debates in the wider common law world, for example, in England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand where efforts at codifying criminal law are ongoing, as is law reform of its general principles. This book is a helpful and reliable source of authority for legal academics, judges, legal practitioners and criminal law reformers. It also holds wider scholarly appeal, of interest to legal theorists, historians and policy specialists.