Criminal Law 4ed (2002)

• Date: 24 May 2019
• Published date: 24 May 2019

BOOK REVIEWS

Criminal Law 4ed (2002)

by C R Snyman (2002)

Butterworths. v — xii & pp 616. Price 397.68

ISBN: 0409056278

SHANNON HOCTOR

University of KwaZulu

-

Natal, Pietermaritzburg

Introduction

Since the appearance of the first edition of

Strafreg

in 1981, Professor

Snyman has established himself as one of the pre-eminent criminal law

scholars in South Africa. His lucidity of thought and expression, along with

his capacity for penetrating analysis, has graced his many publications in this

period. No-one conducting any research into the South African criminal law

today could do so adequately without first consulting Snyman on the point.

This deserved status is in no small measure due to the succeeding editions of

Strafreg

and its English counterpart,

Criminal Law,

which have appeared

with admirable regularity since 1981. The fourth edition of

Criminal Law

was

published in 2002, and this work evidences the laudable attributes that have

characterised this publication in the past.

Although Snyman's text has been praised by various reviewers over the

years for the clarity of the distinction between the statement of the prevailing

law and the author's own viewpoint, this view has not necessarily been shared

by students, who have further encountered some problems with the perceived

impenetrability of some of the discussion in the text. To Snyman's credit, he

has responded to such criticism by constantly seeking to refine and to simplify

the text without detracting from his admirably systematic approach.

Clarifications

Examples of the careful reworking of the text of the previous edition (3ed

(1995)) abound. A few fall to be mentioned for the sake of illustration. The

394

(2004) 17 SACJ 394

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