Hector MacQueen has been a member of the Edinburgh Law School staff since 1979, having also taken his LL.B and Ph.D at Edinburgh. Appointed to the Chair of Private Law in 1994, he was Dean of the Law School 1999-2003, and Dean of Research and Deputy Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science in the University 2004-2008. He is on leave of absence January 2010-September 2014, having taken up an appointment as a Scottish Law Commissioner.

Professor MacQueen has previously held visiting appointments at Cornell University in the USA, the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and Stetson University College of Law (‘Florida’s first law school’). He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1995 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2006. Professor MacQueen is Vice-President of the Society of Legal Scholars 2011-2012.  He was Vice-President (Humanities) of the RSE 2008-2011 and is currently a member of the Law subject standing committee of the British Academy.  He is also a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. 

Professor MacQueen's research and teaching focus on three major areas: (1) the history of law; (2) the private law of obligations; and (3) intellectual property. His work is generally centred on Scots law, but emphasises the significance of the comparative and especially the European context for a full understanding of the ‘mixed’ Scottish system and its future as well as its past development. It also argues that ‘mixed systems’ can help us understand the likely trajectory of European private law in the future.

In the history of law, Professor MacQueen has worked mainly on the medieval period. His doctoral research led ultimately to Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval Scotland (1993), and he has continued to build on that foundation since in a series of articles. Where the 1993 book focused most on the period 1250-1500, subsequent specifically medieval work has gone further back into the 12th century, highlighting the significance of canon as well as English law in Scottish developments, and considering links between royal and purely local justice in ever greater depth. The intention is finally to produce another book interpreting the pre-1250 period in detail. Also springing from the medieval research is an interest in how the period is treated in post-medieval times, with a central theme being its contribution to Scottish perceptions of legal distinctiveness (Scottish legal nationalism). A series of articles has highlighted in particular the contribution of Lord Cooper of Culross in the mid-20th century. A short book on Scottish legal nationalism is planned, pulling together the articles already published and adding to them the results of further research. Professor MacQueen’s legal history work also encompasses the Literary Directorship of the Stair Society (1999-date) and he is currently (2007-2011) Chair of the Scottish Medievalists Conference. He was also Chair of the Scottish Records Advisory Council 2001-2008, and is a Vice-President of the Scottish Text Society (Council member since 1993). He is a Corresponding Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, and a member of the Law School’s Centre for Legal History.

Professor MacQueen’s work in obligations is mainly concerned with the law of contract and unjustified enrichment. He is the author or co-author of standard student texts on these subjects, and is also the Scottish editor of Atiyah’s Sale of Goods (10th, 11th and 12th edns, 2001, 2005 and 2010). Professor MacQueen also recast the relevant chapters of the general textbook Gloag & Henderson’s Law of Scotland (12th edn, 2007) (of which he has been a General Editor since the mid-1990s). A new edition is in preparation for publication in 2013.

Three inter-related strands have developed his research in obligations: (1) membership of, first, the Lando Commission on European Contract Law (1995-2003) and then the Co-ordinating Committee of the Study Group on a European Civil Code (SGECC) from its inception in 1999 to its conclusion in 2008, which in turn led to involvement in the Co-PECL Common Frame of Reference project on European patrimonial law (here he worked especially on sales and services contracts as well as mandate, trusts and donation); (2) engagement with the law of other ‘mixed’ jurisdictions, notably South Africa and Louisiana; and (3) consideration of the impact of human rights on private law as a result of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Scotland Act 1998. The work also draws on historical and comparative approaches, especially in collaborations with David Sellar.  Professor MacQueen’s standing in comparative studies led to his election as a Vice-President of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists in 2002.

Copyright and design law are Professor MacQueen’s principal areas of interest in intellectual property, although he also carries out research on common law aspects of the subject such as passing off and breach of confidence. He was the first Director (2002-2007) of the AHRC Research Centre in Intellectual Property and Technology Law (SCRIPT). With Centre colleagues Charlotte Waelde, Graeme Laurie and Abbe Brown, Professor MacQueen has produced the innovative student text Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy (1st edn 2007, 2nd edn 2010). Research on copyright has focused mainly on the development of the law in the digital environment, criticising the apparent expansion of exclusive rights but also considering the extent to which copyright could or should be replaced by contract in this context. A monograph on this area, to be co-written with Charlotte Waelde, is now Professor MacQueen’s main project in the AHRC Centre. His best-known work on design law is Copyright, Competition and Industrial Design (2nd edn, 1995).

Many aspects of Professor MacQueen’s interest in legal history, the law of obligations and intellectual property came together thanks to collaboration in and beyond the SCRIPT Centre in work on the protection of privacy as an aspect of personality rights.  Professor MacQueen’s expertise in intellectual property is recognised, not only in his long-standing membership of the Law Society of Scotland Working Party on the subject, but also in his service on the DTI Intellectual Property Advisory Committee (2003-2005), as Scottish Representative on the UK Justice Ministry Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (2004-2011), and as a member of the Intellectual Property Institute Advisory Council of Experts (1999-date), the Legal Advisory Board of Creative Commons UK, and Intellectual Property Specialist Accreditation Panel of the Law Society of Scotland (1998-date). Professor MacQueen was an invited member of the RSA group which produced the Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property in 2005, and played a leading role in the British Academy Review of Copyright and Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2006). 

Professor MacQueen has successfully supervised numerous doctoral students in all his areas of interest (especially copyright): 18 have gained their PhD, and 2 are currently in progress. He has examined 21 PhDs at other universities in the UK and abroad, as well as numerous Masters research theses. He has been an external examiner of taught undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Dundee, Strathclyde, Aberdeen, Glasgow, the National University of Ireland, Sheffield, London School of Economics, Robert Gordon’s Aberdeen, Queen’s University Belfast and Manchester.

He also has an active interest in legal education, and has published an introductory guide to the study of Scots law, now in its 3rd edition. He is examiner in Contract, Quasi-Contract and Delict in the Faculty of Advocates (1997-date). He has been an invited external assessor of teaching and research quality at the Universities of Cork (2006) and Luxembourg (2008), and is a member of the Law Society of Scotland Law Schools Accreditation Panel (2001-date).

Professor MacQueen edits with Scott Wortley the Scots Law News blog, which has been running since 1996. He also wrote the 1989 centenary history of Heriots Cricket Club, a work enthusiastically reviewed by no less than Alexander McCall Smith in chapter 6 of his novel, Love Over Scotland (2006).