Professor Ian Willock of Dundee University, one of Scotland’s leading academic lawyers, has died aged 83.
He was appointed professor of jurisprudence at the age of 35 at Queen’s College, Dundee, when it was part of St Andrews University, and became one of the key figures in the growth of legal studies when the campus became Dundee University.
At national level he was a member of the Stewart Committee whose reports introduced road traffic fixed penalties and fiscal fines as alternatives to prosecution.
He was also involved with the production of Lord McCluskey’s Reith Lectures which explored the constitutional position of judges and their relationship with elected politicians.
A committed believer in the use of law as a means of achieving a fairer society and a stimulating teacher of legal theory, he was also a good spotter of legal talent and a contributor to liberal intellectual Catholicism in Scotland.
Born in Perth, he graduated in law from Aberdeen University and after national service in the Intelligence Corps, he went to the University of Michigan on a fellowship.
On his return, he qualified as an advocate and moved to Glasgow University to undertake a PhD following which he took up a senior lectureship in Aberdeen.
At Dundee, he was in effect the only full-time professor, and he was thrust into the deanship of the law faculty at an early stage in his career.
Teaching jurisprudence was a Dundee speciality, and he gathered around him a group that included the late Neil McCormick, Regius Professor of Public Law at Edinburgh University.
He sought to find innovative and critical ways of thinking about law, and he found much satisfaction in encouraging students in their endeavours.
A number of his students went on to achieve considerable success, including Zenon Bankowski, Emeritus Professor of Legal Theory at Edinburgh University, and Lynda Clark Lady Clark of Calton chairwoman of the Scottish Law Commission who was elevated to the Inner House of the Court of Session.
His brother George, for whom he had chief responsibility for many years, was severely disabled, and his wife Elizabeth, who shared that responsibility, both predeceased him.