Neil MacCormick

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Sir (Donald) Neil MacCormick QC (Hon), FBA, FRSE, is the current Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh, where he also holds a personal Leverhulme Research Professorship. He is a vice-president of the Scottish National Party (SNP), and a renowned legal philosopher.

1 Biography
2 Academia
3 Political career
4 Academic works
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Born May 27, 1941, he is the son of one of the SNP's founders, John MacCormick. He read for an M.A. in Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Glasgow, before benefiting from a Snell exhibition and taking the B.A. in Jurisprudence at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1982 he was awarded the research degree of LL.D. by Edinburgh. In 1999 MacCormick was appointed Queen's Counsel 'honoris causa', and was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2001, in recognition of services to scholarship in Law. In 2004 he was a recipient of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Royal Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement.

[edit] Academia

MacCormick was a lecturer in Jurisprudence at the University of St Andrews (Queen's College, Dundee) from 1965-67. Following this, he was a fellow and tutor in Jurisprudence, Balliol College, Oxford 1968-1972, and thereafter has held his current position as Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at Edinburgh University. He also held the position of Dean of Law Faculty between 1973-76 and was sometime Vice-Principal for International Affairs.

Professor MacCormick is scheduled to retire from Edinburgh University on 1st February 2008 after completing 36 years as Professor (and later Senior Professor) there. He was accorded with the honour of a series of lectures in his name by the University's School of Law, and delivered the School of Law's opening Tercentenary Lecture, introduced by former Lord President Lord Cullen, on 18th January 2007.

[edit] Political career

He was a Scottish Member of the European Parliament, for the SNP, elected in 1999, taking a leave of absence from the University of Edinburgh. Professor MacCormick was a member of the Convention on the Future of Europe from 2002–3, drafting the proposed Constitutional Treaty for the European Union. He was voted Scottish Euro MP of the Year in 2001, 2002 and 2003 at the Scottish Politician of the Year Awards, and retired from elected office in 2004 to complete his Leverhulme Research Professorship at Edinburgh.

[edit] Academic works

MacCormick has written numerous journal articles and books, concentrating both on Law in a European context and the philosophy of law. Works such as Legal Right and Social Democracy: Essays in Legal and Political Philosophy (1984), Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (1978), Rhetoric and The Rule of Law (2005) and Institutions of Law (2007) all convey his particular brand of political philosophy. Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory answers many of the Dworkinian critiques of the Hartian conception of law, and it is seen by some as showing a middle ground between the two.