MacCormick was a lecturer in jurisprudence at the School of Law, University of Dundee (which was attached to University of St Andrews at that time) from 1965 to 1967. Following this, he was a fellow and tutor in jurisprudence, Balliol College, Oxford 1968–1972, and thereafter held the Regius Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh. He was also Leverhulme Research Professor at Edinburgh from 1997 to 1999, and from 2004 to 2008. In addition, he held the position of Dean of Law Faculty between 1973 and 1976, and was sometime Provost of the Faculty Group of Law and Social Science, and Vice-Principal for International Affairs.
Professor MacCormick retired from the Regius Chair on 1 February 2008 after completing 36 years as professor (and later senior professor) at the University of Edinburgh. He was accorded with the honour of a series of lectures in his name by the university's School of Law and delivered the School of Law's opening Tercentenary Lecture, introduced by former Lord President Lord Cullen, on 18 January 2007. He gave his final lecture as Regius Professor, entitled 'Just Law', on Monday 28 January 2008. He continued thereafter in his role as President of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy.
He was elected vice president of the SNP in 1999 and remained in the position until 2004.[6] In 2007 MacCormick was appointed as a special advisor on Europe to the newly elected SNP-ledScottish Government.[7]
Academic works
MacCormick wrote numerous journal articles and books, concentrating both on law in a European context and the philosophy of law. Works such as Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (1978), H. L. A. Hart (1981), Legal Right and Social Democracy: Essays in Legal and Political Philosophy (1984), An Institutional Theory of Law: New Approaches to Legal Positivism (with O. Weinberger) (1986), Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, and Nation in the European Commonwealth (1999), Rhetoric and The Rule of Law (2005) and Institutions of Law (2007) all convey his particular brand of legal philosophy. Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory answers many of the Dworkinian critiques of the Hartian conception of law, and it is seen by some as showing a middle ground between the two. Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, and Nation in the European Commonwealth (1999) examines the transformation of sovereignty as consequence of constitutional pluralism in the European Union.[8] His final book was Practical Reason in Law and Morality (2008).[9]
Just after retiring from his chair at the University of Edinburgh in 2008, MacCormick was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.[12] He died on 5 April 2009.[6]
Podcast recording
Donald Neil MacCormick, Scottish Politics Today
Scottish Politics Today audio recording / podcast. Recorded on 12 October 2005, in the office of Professor Neil MacCormick at the University of Edinburgh.
^Bjarup, Jes (2009). "Natural Law, Practical Reason and Autonomous Persons – A Critical Review of Neil MacCormick: Practical Reason in Law and Morality. (Rezensionsabhandlung)". Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie. 95 (3): 428–439. doi:10.25162/arsp-2009-0031. S2CID252459943.
Carty, Anthony (1983), Scottish Legal Culture and the Withering Away of the State: A Study in MacCormick's Nationalism, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 14, Autumn 1983, pp. 5 – 9, ISSN0264-0856