David Ormerod

David Christopher Ormerod CBE, KC (Hon), DCL (Hon) is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the Faculty of Laws, University College London.

Academic and legal career

Ormerod graduated with an LLB from the University of Essex in 1998, before working for a year as a lecturer there. He then moved to the University of Nottingham, where he worked as a lecturer and a senior lecturer, meeting Professor John Cyril Smith, who later invited him to edit Smith and Hogan's Criminal Law. Smith passed away in 2003, as Ormerod took professorships at the University of Hull and University of Leeds, before moving to Queen Mary University of London in 2007. In 2010, Ormerod took up a position as Law Commissioner at the Law Commission of England and Wales, responsible for all law reform projects relating to the criminal law.

During his secondment, Ormerod was made King's (then Queen's) Counsel (honoris causa, 2013), appointed as Professor of Criminal Justice at University College London, and appointed a deputy High Court judge in 2018. Ormerod was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to criminal justice.

Impact

Ormerod has for over two decades been editor, now with Karl Laird, of Smith, Hogan and Ormerod's Criminal Law (Ormerod's name added in 2018 in the 15th Edition). Originally Smith and Hogan, this volume is considered persuasive authority in England and Wales and other common law jurisdictions. Ormerod is also editor of Blackstone's Criminal Practice, was Consultant Editor for Halsbury's Laws of England Criminal Law (2020) and Criminal Evidence and Procedure (2021), and was General Editor of the Criminal Law Review (2012-2023).

Ormerod's work at the Law Commission was varied and impactful. Reforms to the Sentencing Code led to the Sentencing Act 2020, proposals around contempt of court rules in the digital age led to reforms in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, and discussion continues about how to respond to proposals stemming from reports around misconduct in public office, offences against the person and insanity defences. In relation to the Sentencing Code, parliamentarians have descrived Ormerod as the "principal driver", and the work "extraordinary", "exceptional", the result of "brilliant imagination", and whose "work on this and other measures has been of singular importance in improving the quality of our criminal law".

Ormerod is widely acknowledged as a transformative force in English law. During the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, upon accepting amendments concerning strangulation and suffocation advised upon by Ormerod, the Government, through then-minister David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Tredegar, noted that this was "not the first time, and will not be the last, that [Ormerod] has contributed significantly to the criminal law of this country".