Lord Rodger passes away

28 June 2011 by Adam Wagner

Supreme Court justice Lord Alan Rodger of Earlsferry sadly passed away on Sunday at the age of 66 after a short illness. 

Lord Rodger was in the first group of 12 Supreme Court justices and was one of the two Scottish judges at the court. The Supreme Court broadcast a tribute today via its new Supreme Court Live service. The transcript can be read here.

See obituaries in The Scotsman, The Telegraph, the Herald Scotland and Aidan O’Neill QC on the UK Supreme Court Blog. O’Neill says:

It was a pleasure and a privilege to appear before him as a judge. He could spot a weak argument at a hundred paces. But his questioning and testing of counsel’s submissions were at all times courteously done, and always got straight to the heart of the issue. If he had a weakness as a judge it was that in his judgments he would often find on a precedent or a point that had not been raised by either side in argument. But he was almost invariably right on these points, even if reached without the benefit of counsel’s submissions… His untimely death robs us of a great jurist, and of a good man. His passing diminishes all of us who had the privilege to know him and to work with him.