Dr Angus Campbell’s class in American Constitutional Law was the first honours subject I studied at Aberdeen. Having barely attained the pass mark of 9 out of 20 in my first- and second-year subjects (and sometimes even a 9 was beyond me), Dr Campbell’s class – which he taught alongside Drs Heather Lardy and Michael Plaxton – awoke my interest in law. 

Racial segregation, affirmative action, the law of elections, state surveillance and reproductive rights; Dred Scott v Sandford, Plessy v Ferguson (and Harlan J’s dissent), Brown v Board of Education, Reynolds v Sims, Bush v Gore, Griswold v Connecticut, Roe v Wade: this course was the real deal. And as a West Wing fan, I was captivated. The reading list was daunting but brilliantly curated and Dr Campbell’s deployment of the Socratic method didn’t allow you to hide in seminars.

Beneath the outward eccentricities was a man of deep learning, evidenced by his scholarly work on the subjects he taught. He also had a great way with words. In a 1993 article in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Dr Campbell critiqued the controversial decision of the US Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v Casey (1992), which saw off an attempt to overturn Roe v Wade but which weakened the protection in the process. 

Dr Campbell summed up the in-part dissenting opinion of Blackman J – who had written the court’s opinion in Roe – as “reek[ing] of the views of a man sentenced to death, who has won a reprieve, but views that reprieve as being perhaps merely temporary”. Thirty years later of course, both Roe and Casey were overturned by Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. I would have loved to discuss Dobbs with Dr Campbell.

American con law aside, Dr Campbell was an ever-present figure in the Taylor Building in Old Aberdeen. Always up for a chat, he quietly assisted students in myriad ways. When a group of us established the Aberdeen Student Law Review in our final year – an idea inspired by the American student law reviews to which we had been exposed by Dr Campbell – he took a brilliant photo of King’s College, which became the front cover of the journal.
  
He was a good teacher and a kind man. No doubt in common with all those lucky enough to have been taught by him, I was very sorry to learn of his death.

Dominic Scullion