To be asked to deliver the Hamlyn Lectures is a major
A?honour for any academic. To be asked as a Scots legal academic
to deliver them is also a rare honour. Professor Sir Neil
MacCormick experienced that honour before I did but due
to illness was prevented from delivering his lectures. Lord
Bingham of Cornhill did deliver his lectures but tragically also
suffered an untimely death shortly thereafter. As will be clear
from the text of my lectures I owed a significant debt to each
of them. To Neil for supervising my doctoral thesis on the Law
Lords forty years ago and to Tom for the insights which he
afforded to me two years ago as to the role of the Law Lords in
their final decade, when he was the presiding Law Lord.
I am greatly indebted to the Hamlyn Trustees for
the invitation to deliver the 2010 lectures, to Professor Kim
Economides, Chairman of the Trustees, who first brooked the
topic and to Professor Avrom Sherr, his successor, who supported
me throughout the eighteen months of roller-coaster
preparation leading up to the lectures. I was exceedingly fortunate
to follow so shortly in Professor Dame Hazel Genn’s
footsteps and to benefit from frequent discussions with her
as to how best to meet the challenges entailed in the lectures.
Nothing was too much trouble for her, whether it was the full
text of her lectures and powerpoints or advice as to possible
audiences for the lecture