John Sturrock KC

“But have you ever cycled across The Meadows?” In those days, cycleways had not yet been marked out in Edinburgh’s central green space and it was still forbidden to cycle there. “Yes, but…” Too late. My argument about the moral imperative of adhering even to minor rules and regulations floundered. The question had been posed by one of last century’s leading legal philosophers and public intellectuals, Professor (Sir as he later became) Neil MacCormick.

The location was a small office in Old College where I was privileged to be a student in his tutorials when MacCormick taught jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh as part of the second-year curriculum in the late 1970s. He introduced his students to Kelsen, Kant and the “Hart-Devlin” debate. Subsequently, at honours level, a small group of us met regularly with MacCormick to discuss the work of the philosophers Friedrich Hayek and John Finnis. For me, this was a formative intellectual experience. At no time did MacCormick seek to impose his own views. His was a genuine, warm, generous approach to helping us develop our critical faculties. He would usually have a smile on his face and he wore his considerable learning lightly. I doubt that many of us in that classroom truly appreciated just how significant a figure he was and would become.

That significance is beautifully described in an absorbing new book by Professor Maksymilian Del Mar, of Queen Mary University, London, entitled simply Neil MacCormick – A Life in Politics, Philosophy, and Law.

For those who are not familiar with MacCormick, he was the son of ‘King John’ MacCormick, one of the founders of the Scottish National Party. He was an author of the SNP’s constitutional policy and, as a member of the European Parliament, helped to draft the European Constitution. The book covers his contributions to theories of legal and moral reasoning, nationalism, post-sovereignty, subsidiarity, and constitutional pluralism in Europe. While that’s an impressive menu, the book also serves as an inquiry into MacCormick’s life and character.

MacCormick was a passionate believer in enlightened debate: “There is no fanaticism worse than the fanaticism of a closed mind … No-one’s opinion is sacrosanct, not free from the need to be tested and set in competition against opposing opinions. An opinion not tempered in the heat of fair argument is rarely worth holding…”

At a time of worrying polarisation in politics in this country, what shines through – and here I draw on the book’s last chapter – is MacCormick’s commitment to good relations, to concepts of mutuality, reciprocity, civility, civic peace, sincerity, and cooperation; his consideration for and sympathy with others, not letting others down; inclusivity, and the search for common ground, working towards that which “everyone can go along with”, seeking benefits for all. He emphasised the importance of discourse that is mutually respectful and non-coercive, orienting ourselves “towards each other”.

The final passage in the book quotes MacCormick from his final book: “Practical reasoning in morality certainly concerns my plans for myself, but it even more saliently raises the issue of the calls other people have to make on me. What about my children, my spouse, my friends, my colleagues, my employer, my fellow citizens and indeed all my fellow human beings with all their sufferings? How do they figure in my plans? More urgently, how should they? Isn’t that the very essence of every moral problem? What do we owe to others? How do we respond to them?”

These questions are surely as relevant today as they have ever been.

John Sturrock KC is a mediator