Rt Hon The Lord Reed of Allermuir awarded honorary LLD degree by the University of Edinburgh

The Rt Hon The Lord Reed of Allermuir, President of the UK Supreme Court, was awarded the honorary degree of LLD by the University of Edinburgh during the Law School graduation ceremony on the afternoon of 24 November 2023. This was just a little over 45 years since Lord Reed’s previous graduation at Edinburgh when, on 14 July 1978, he received the degree of LLB in the company of four others who would go on to become professors at Edinburgh Law School: George Gretton, Anne Griffiths, Hector MacQueen, and Kenneth Reid. In a remarkable ‘double’ for the Edinburgh Law School, the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Lord Hodge, is also an Edinburgh law graduate.

After graduating with a first at Edinburgh – one of only four students to do so – Lord Reed moved on to Oxford to study for a DPhil, before returning to Edinburgh to prepare for admission as an advocate before the Scottish courts. His career since then has been one of outstanding distinction and achievement. After a busy practice at the bar, mainly in the fields of commercial and public law, he was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1995 and a judge of the Court of Session and High Court three years later. He was then just 41, the youngest person to be appointed to the Court of Session bench within living memory. Lord Reed served as a judge in Edinburgh for fourteen years before becoming a justice of the UK Supreme Court in London in 2012. In 2020, he was appointed to lead that Court as its President. 

Throughout his career Lord Reed has retained strong links with the city of Edinburgh and with this University. The Law School has particular reason to be grateful for the four years in which he served as an energetic Chairman of the Edinburgh Centre for Commercial Law. Lord Reed is also a Patron to the Edinburgh Law School Advancement Committee.

Image credit: Douglas Robertson