Judge and Jurist is a fitting tribute to the memory of one of the finest judges of recent times, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, who died of a brain tumour in 2011. His career, remarkable by any standards, is shrewdly mirrored in the book's format. It began in the academic world where Alan Rodger swiftly acquired, and retained throughout his life, a high reputation as a scholar of Roman law following publication in 1972 of Owners and Neighbours in Roman Law, a dissertation that prompted reassessment of the conventional wisdom on the Roman concept of ownership. It is notable that his bibliography, which runs to no less than 107 items—a curriculum vitae of which many academic lawyers could feel justly proud—concludes with a study of the edictal commentaries of the actio doli, published posthumously in 2012. To the surprise of many, Alan Rodger quit New College, Oxford in 1972 to read for the Scottish bar. His legal career was distinguished: by turns, he was advocate, Q.C., Solicitor General, Lord Advocate, Senator of the College of Justice, and finally, from 1996, Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice-General. In 2001 he was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, an office that was to translate eight years later into Justice of the Supreme Court. Alongside his judicial work, his largely palingenetic writings on Roman law, his editorial works on Scots law, and his papers on a congeries of legal topics, Alan Rodger was also a considerable historian, particularly of the nineteenth century. This reviewer well remembers, on the occasion of a joyous luncheon, the undisguised pleasure with which he discoursed on the recent publication of The Courts, the Church and the Constitution: Aspects of the Disruption of 1843, a series of lectures devoted to the legal battles between church and state that contributed to the collapse of the Church of Scotland—which, one contributor points out, may connect with Lord Rodger's judgment in Percy v. Board of National Mission of the Church of Scotland (subsequently overruled by the House of Lords at [2006] 2 A.C. 28) and his later dissent in R (E) v. JFS Governing Body [2010] 2 A.C. 728.

After affectionate tributes offered to Lord Rodger's memory in Edinburgh and in Oxford, the second section of the book is made up of essays from no less than nine of Lord Rodger's former judicial colleagues, as well as from his last judicial assistant. The judges each focus on different facets of his judicial work. Lord Brown examines Lord Rodger as a dissentient, Lord Rodger being the most frequent dissenting voice on the Supreme Court. Lord Dyson reflects on Lord Rodger's contribution to instilling harmony of principle and consistency into the common law, as well as bringing to the fore both his ability to dissent and the considerable power of many of his concurring judgments. Baroness Hale chronicles his not inconsiderable contribution to the development of mental health law. Lord Hoffmann pursues a theme on which he has written before concerning Fairchild v. Glenhaven Funeral Services Ltd. [2003] 1 A.C. 32 and its spawn, where Lord Rodger's misgivings about the majority's decision in Barker v. Corus (UK) plc [2006] 2 A.C. 572 ultimately were vindicated. His Lordship's remarks along the way about the manner in which courts employ comparative law are almost disconcertingly honest (pp. 63–4). Lord Hope delivers an intriguing account of the contents of a few of Lord Rodger's judicial notebooks, which, by chance, escaped routine destruction. The contents may not exactly be on a par with Lord Mansfield's court notebooks, but their very sparseness is strong testimony to the judge's powers of memory and concentration, as well as affording the occasional colourful insight, such as the recording of a fragment of the Deemster of the Isle of Man's judicial oath—“to administer the law as justly as the herring backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish”—slap-bang in the midst of notes taken at the hearing of ‘Cocky’ Warren's fruitless appeal to the Privy Council (Warren v. Attorney General of Jersey [2011] 3 W.L.R. 464.) Lord Mance examines the use of foreign law by English courts, concluding that it might even be “valuable to have a direct in-house facility for comparative law research” in the Supreme Court (p. 97). I am not sure what Alan Rodger would have made of that. Lord Phillips looks at human rights cases in which Lord Rodger figured and, like a number of contributors, points up his famous, self-coined declaration in Home Secretary v. AF (No. 3) [2010] 2 A.C. 269 at [98], “Argentoratum locutum, iudicium finitum—Strasbourg has spoken, the case is closed,” a posture which some of our senior judges of late, most happily, have shown themselves more reluctant to adopt. Lord Reed writes on the form and language of judgments, a subject close to Alan Rodger's heart and on which it was his custom to lecture in Cambridge each summer. He produces an elegant essay sprinkled liberally with memorable excerpts from Lord Rodger's speeches summarising admirably the artful literary devices that adorn them. Along with some of the striking incipits with which from the first he would seize hold of the reader's attention (e.g., In re Guardian News & Media Ltd. [2010] 2 W.L.R. 325 at [1]), like several others in this volume, Lord Reed cites a passage from HJ (Iran) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] 1 A.C. 596 at [78], a case concerned with the persecution of homosexuals in Cameroon and Iran, which risks turning into the text for which Lord Rodger will be chiefly remembered:

Lord Reed redresses the balance somewhat, correctly highlighting the classical purity of the passage, which juxtaposes two Ciceronian triplets, as well as noting anecdotally that Lord Rodger's most acute concern at the time of composition was not so much with the propriety of the passage as with whether to put ‘Kylie Minogue’ or simply ‘Kylie’: “the choice for which he finally opted reflects his ear for well-written prose: ‘Kylie concerts’ maintains the rhythm of ‘playing rugby’, ‘drinking beer’, and ‘talking about girls’” (p. 130). This observation epitomises the importance Lord Rodger always attached to style in judicial writing. Lord Walker, finally, considers ‘Lord Rodger and Statute Law.’ For Alan Rodger, who for many years was President of the Statute Law Society and inveigled many of us into participating in its activities, legislation was an abiding interest, and many of his judgments display his strict insistence on the adoption of a proper, orthodox approach to statutory interpretation.

A third section of Judge and Jurist is devoted to fourteen studies in Roman law and legal history. The topics, in the main, are highly technical. Many concern an area of law Lord Rodger especially relished, the lex Aquilia. The contributions also often reflect his interest in palingenesia and his unwavering devotion to the memory and methods of David Daube and of Otto Lenel. Exemplifying his sure grasp of Latin, a language we are told he could speak fluently, David Johnston concludes his paper on Lenel and Rodger with an entertaining spoof Digest text, D.50.18.3 “Ulpianus libro singulari de officiis iuris consultorum reginae”, which Alan Rodger composed on the occasion of the author's elevation to the rank of Queen's Counsel.

The fourth section of the book is composed of eleven studies of aspects of Scots law and Scottish legal history. To single out three of these essays, Paul Cullen focuses on the significant contribution Lord Rodger made to Scottish criminal law during his period as a Scots lawyer, public servant and judge, whilst Hector MacQueen offers a diverting account of Robert Burns' brief but passionate love affair with Agnes McLehose through the ‘Letters to Clarinda’ whose publication was eventually suppressed by the Court of Session in 1804 (Cadell and Davies v. Stewart (1804)), a study that one senses Alan Rodger would have savoured for its racy tone as well as for its legal resonances. Finally, Kenneth Reid retells the instructive story of the City of Glasgow Bank Directors' trial, once such a cause célèbre that to the best of this reviewer's recollection it was the only fraud trial to figure in either the Notable Scottish Trials series or its enlarged successor, the Notable British Trials series, published by Hodge & Co.; and, as any second-hand bookseller knows, it is also by far the rarest volume in the series.

The final section is something of a salmagundi. Amongst the dishes proffered, Joshua Getzler's and Aidan O'Neill's papers pursue stimulating lines of inquiry, inspired by Alan Rodger's Jean Clark Lectures on the 1843 Disruption, whilst Andrew Burrows builds upon the opening lines of Alan Rodger's Blackstone Lecture of 2004 and investigates retrospectivity and the law in the light of various of Alan Rodger's decisions and comments. For this reader, the most thought-provoking, and possibly prophetic, paper was Jack Beatson's ‘Legal Academics: Forgotten Players and Interlopers’, an unsettling reflection on the relationship between the academic and the practising strands of the legal profession—a subject on which Alan Rodger published a typically lively address towards the end of his days (Judges and Academics in the United Kingdom (2010) 29(1)U.Q.L.J. 29.) Both repay reading, particularly for the gloomy, but one fears accurate, assessment towards the end of the Lord Justice's paper that what seems to be the increasing influence of the academic filament may be but “a passing phase”.

Rarely can this reviewer claim to have enjoyed so much reading a tribute volume of this kind. It is a stirring collection of papers—if one may make so bold, well worthy of the outstanding lawyer and scholar to whose memory it is dedicated. As well as succeeding as a work of real scholarship, the tributes offered in Judge and Jurist repeatedly bring out for the reader the warmth of Alan Rodger's personality and the genuine affection in which he was held by all those privileged to have known him. This reviewer cannot think of any similar volume in which a legal honorand is remembered quite so amiably. The book also revives personal memories. David Edward's reference to Supreme Court headgear (p. 13) recalled to mind the unbridled mirth with which a number of us, Alan included, hypothesised wildly on the ceremonial head-dress that might befit a Justice of the then nascent Supreme Court—whose building, Baroness Hale tells us (p. 51), did not initially inspire much enthusiasm in him either. But on two occasions contributors struck an especially vibrant chord for this reviewer (pp. 17 and 167). En passant they each recalled one of Alan Rodger's favoured debating ploys. Responding to any unappealing proposition, he would fix you with an expression of half disbelief, half reproof—perhaps what he once termed “respectful incredulity” (Smith v. Smith [2006] 1 W.L.R. 2024 at [14])—and exclaim: “So, Roderick, you actually believe that?” It is a melancholy fact that never again will the reviewer be able to look suitably sheepish and answer, “It would appear that I do.”