To be asked to deliver the Hamlyn Lectures is a major A?honour for any academic. To be asked as a Scots legal academic to deliver them is also a rare honour. Professor Sir Neil MacCormick experienced that honour before I did but due to illness was prevented from delivering his lectures. Lord Bingham of Cornhill did deliver his lectures but tragically also suffered an untimely death shortly thereafter. As will be clear from the text of my lectures I owed a significant debt to each of them. To Neil for supervising my doctoral thesis on the Law Lords forty years ago and to Tom for the insights which he afforded to me two years ago as to the role of the Law Lords in their final decade, when he was the presiding Law Lord. I am greatly indebted to the Hamlyn Trustees for the invitation to deliver the 2010 lectures, to Professor Kim Economides, Chairman of the Trustees, who first brooked the topic and to Professor Avrom Sherr, his successor, who supported me throughout the eighteen months of roller-coaster preparation leading up to the lectures. I was exceedingly fortunate to follow so shortly in Professor Dame Hazel Genn’s footsteps and to benefit from frequent discussions with her as to how best to meet the challenges entailed in the lectures. Nothing was too much trouble for her, whether it was the full text of her lectures and powerpoints or advice as to possible audiences for the lecture