JUDGE AND JURIST: ESSAYS IN MEMORY OF LORD RODGER OF EARLSFERRY. Eds Andrew Burrows, David Johnston and Reinhard Zimmermann Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2013. xlviii + 699 pp. ISBN 9780199677344. £150.
| Date | 01 May 2014 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2014.0216 |
| Published date | 01 May 2014 |
| Author | J D Ford |
| Pages | 296-299 |
A collection of essays on the theme of the judge and jurist might be expected to compare the roles of adjudicators and academics and to explore the relationship between them. One of the most interesting essays in this unfailingly interesting collection does in fact do just that (Jack Beatson, “Legal Academics: Forgotten Players or Interlopers?”), and others shed light on the subject less directly. But the theme here is actually the commemoration of
Alan Rodger's extraordinary achievements, and the modesty and humour with which he carried them off, are described both in the four “Tributes to Lord Rodger” that make up the first part of the volume and in the personal reminiscences with which the essays in other parts typically start or finish. Despite the repetitive use of the same examples by many writers, the cumulative effect is to give a clear impression of a remarkably consistent character, instantly recognisable to anyone who knew or met the man. He was evidently not acting but displaying genuine integrity (and not all the examples used are commonplace either – see, for example, the dazzling gem reproduced at 193).
With a surprisingly realistic appreciation of his own position and prospects, a youthful Alan Rodger sensed in 1972 that, for him, “becoming a professor of Roman law would be too easy for words”, and that after the publication of
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