Stephen Cretney

Stephen Michael Cretney, FBA, Hon. QC (1936–2019) was a British legal scholar. He was Professor of Law at the University of Bristol from 1984 to 1993 and then a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, until 2001.

Life Born on 25 February 1936, Cretney attended Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1959.

After graduating, he trained as a solicitor at Macfarlanes

Honours and awards Cretney was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1985 and was appointed an honorary Queen's Counsel in 1992. He was an academic bencher of the Inner Temple. and the University of Oxford awarded him the DCL higher doctorate in 1985. He was supported ten days after the interview by David Pannick QC (as he then was), an administrative law expert who has overturned government interpretation of the law in court on many occasions, and a former attorney general, Sir Nicholas Lyell QC. Lecturing to the Family Law section of the Society of Legal Scholars in September 2006 Cretney warned of future legal challenges designed to prevent Mrs Parker-Bowles becoming Queen or inheriting from the royal family. A further article followed.

Publications

(Co-edited with Gerald Dworkin) Theobald on Wills (Sweet and Maxwell, 13th ed., 1970). Principles of Family Law (Sweet and Maxwell, 1974; 7th ed., 2002). Enduring Powers of Attorney: A Practitioner's Guide (Jordan, 1986). Elements of Family Law (Sweet and Maxwell, 1987). (Co-authored with Gwynn Davis and Jean Collins) Simple Quarrels: Negotiations and Adjudication in Divorce (Clarendon Press, 1994). (Co-authored with Roger Bird) Divorce—the New Law, (Family Law, 1996). Law, Law Reform and the Family (Oxford University Press, 1998). Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History (Oxford University Press, 2003). Same Sex Relationships from 'Odious Crime' to 'Gay Marriage''' (Oxford University Press, 2006).