Sir John Grant McKenzie Laws ‑ a Lord Justice of Appeal – succumbed to Covid-19 virus on 5 April 2020.
He served from 1999 to 2016. He was the Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science at the University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.
Laws was born on 10 May 1945, the son of Dr Frederic Laws and his wife Dr Margaret Ross, née McKenzie, the daughter of the Congregational minister and academic John Grant McKenzie. He was educated at Durham Chorister School, and as a King's Scholar at Durham School. He studied at Exeter College, Oxford as a Senior Open Classical Scholar, receiving a First Class BA in 1967, and an MA in 1976. He became an Honorary Fellow of the College in 2000.
He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1970, and appointed a Bencher in 1985. He was appointed First Junior Treasury Counsel (Common Law), in 1984, and a Recorder in 1985, holding both positions until his appointment to the High Court in 1992.
Laws was appointed a High Court Judge in 1992, serving in the Queen's Bench Division, and was knighted at this time. He served until 1998, and in 1999 was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a Lord Justice of Appeal and appointed to the Privy Council.
Sir John married Sophie Susan Sydenham Cole Marshall in 1973, with whom he had one daughter. Lady Laws died in 2017. He was a member of the Garrick Club. He was the uncle of political adviser Dominic Cummings.
Sir John Laws was the Visitor at Cumberland Lodge since 2004.
On 5 April 2020 he died in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where he was originally being treated for sepsis and other conditions, due to health complications from Covid-19.