Following the completion of his law studies in Oxford, MacCormick took up his first job in Dundee (1965–67), lecturing in both English law and in jurisprudence, with a particular focus on legal reasoning. This chapter first briefly discusses his time in Dundee, before turning to focus mainly on MacCormick’s complex relationship with HLA Hart. Hart, the English-speaking world’s leading legal philosopher of his generation, was in Oxford at the time MacCormick was there – first teaching MacCormick (with lectures on rights and Kelsen), and later being his senior colleague. This chapter focuses on the second period, from 1967 to 1972, during which MacCormick got to know Hart via the debates over student discipline and university authority (both proctorial and academic). Hart wrote a famous report – known as the Hart Report (1969) – in those years, with which MacCormick was very familiar, especially as he then held numerous disciplinary positions in his College. This chapter discusses MacCormick’s readings of Hart (especially his 1981 book on him) in the context of the debates over authority in the University of Oxford in this period, and in the context of MacCormick’s broader interests in moral and political issues.

The formation of the National Government and the debates around national recovery bring into stark focus the national distinctions that still shaped British politics in the age of mass democracy and mass media. This chapter explores the effect of these distinctions on how Scottish Unionists and Welsh Conservatives related to the National Government, how they presented its record of economic recovery to local voters, and how their opponents responded. Drawing on case studies including Dunbartonshire and Dundee in Scotland, Pembrokeshire and Gower in Wales, the chapter analyses the popular politics of National Conservatism as it traversed the so-called ‘Anglo-Celtic frontier’. Starting with a discussion of the 1931 general election campaign, it demonstrates how the National Government helped the Conservatives to neutralise old hostilities while also helping their opponents to renew or inspire anti-Tory sentiment. This was reflected in the election results: in Scotland, the Unionists gained twenty-eight seats, including Dundee for the first time, while in Wales it gained only five seats and failed to regain Pembrokeshire. The chapter argues that this in turn set the politics of recovery in Scotland and Wales on different trajectories. Through its MPs and ministers, the government enjoyed a high-profile presence in Scotland that it lacked in Wales. Even so, in both nations its claims of recovery, like the National Government itself, provoked renewed anti-Tory – and often anti-Westminster – rhetoric among Liberals, Labour and, in Scotland, nationalists. At the 1935 general election while little changed in the relative strengths of Scottish Unionism and Welsh Conservatism, Labour emerged as the net beneficiary.