Stanley Alexander de Smith
Stanley Alexander de Smith FBA (27 March 1922 – 12 February 1974) was an English academic lawyer and author. Biography 
De Smith was born in London and educated at Southend High School and St Catharine's College, Cambridge (BA 1942, MA 1946); he received his doctorate from the University of London in 1959. After distinguished war service with the Royal Artillery—during which he was mentioned in despatches and awarded the Order of Leopold II and the Croix de Guerre (1940) with palms—he taught from 1946 at the London School of Economics, University of London, successively as Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Reader and (from 1959 to 1970) as Professor of Public Law. He taught LLM courses on "Constitutional Laws of the Commonwealth I" (focusing on Canada, Australia and either India or Pakistan) and, from 1957, "a second course on constitutional laws of the Commonwealth, with a syllabus excluding those countries already covered by the established course and devoting special attention to the constitutions of Ghana, the Federation of Malaya, the Federation and Regions of Nigeria, the Federation of the West Indies, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Singapore, Uganda and Kenya". In 1954 he accompanied Sir Keith Hancock, acting as secretary to the Namirembe Conference in Uganda. In 1970, de Smith returned to the University of Cambridge as Downing Professor of the Laws of England and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. In 1971 he was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy. He was editor of the Cambridge Law Journal from 1973 to 1974. He died in February 1974, aged 51. During the 1960s he served on a part-time basis as Constitutional Commissioner for Mauritius. He drafted its constitution at the time the country attained independence on 12 March 1968. His work for Mauritius is commemorated by a memorial in the Pamplemousses Botanical Gardens; his ashes were scattered in that country. 