Neil MacCormick

Neil MacCormick (1941–2009) was one of the twentieth century's most important legal philosophers and one of Scotland's most influential public intellectuals. This book tells the story of his political and philosophical life, from his intensely political childhood as the son of 'King John', one of the founders of the Scottish National Party, through to his involvement in Scottish politics – especially as the author of SNP's constitutional policy – and his role as a Member of the European Parliament, helping to draft the European Constitution. With special attention to MacCormick's character, this book offers a reading of his entire oeuvre, covering his contributions to theories of legal and moral reasoning, institutional legal theory, nationalism, post-sovereignty, subsidiarity, and constitutional pluralism in Europe. This book reads MacCormick as a highly creative thinker who excelled in the art of constructing inclusive middles and thereby developed his own distinctive approach to politics and philosophy.

Maksymilian Del Mar is Professor of Legal Theory and Legal Humanities at the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. His first book, Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication (2020) won the 2022 Commendations for Excellence by the International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy (the IVR). It has been the subject of numerous symposia in journals, attracting reviews by theorists of legal reasoning, philosophers of imagination, and literary theorists and historians. He has edited numerous volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities, and serves as an editor, since 2017, of the Law in Context series, and, since 2024, Elements in Legal Humanities, both for Cambridge University Press.