Sir Roy Goode CBE KC FBA (1933–2026)

Chambers is deeply saddened by the death of Sir Roy Goode, who has died at the age of 93.

Sir Roy was, by common consent, the pre-eminent commercial law scholar of his generation. As founder and first Director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and later as Norton Rose Professor of English Law at Oxford and a Fellow of St John’s College, he shaped the modern study of commercial law in this country and well beyond it.

His scholarship was foundational. Generations of practitioners were brought up on Goode on Commercial Law, Principles of Corporate Insolvency Law and Legal Problems of Credit and Security, works that remain indispensable at the commercial Bar. His contribution to transnational commercial law, including his pivotal role in the creation of the Cape Town Convention, gave English commercial thinking a lasting international reach. His chairmanship of the Pension Law Review Committee, in the wake of the Maxwell affair, led directly to the Pensions Act 1995.

Sir Roy was well known to many at 3VB. Several members appeared against him in international arbitrations, where his command of principle was as formidable across the table as it was on the page. Other 3VB members knew him as a colleague from their years in the academy, particularly Sir Ross Cranston, one of his closest academic colleagues and friends, and Professor Ewan McKendrick, Professor Louise Gullifer and Sir William Blair. Adam Kramer KC was his research assistant at the start of his Bar career. All of us have practised in his shadow: citing his texts, arguing from his principles, and drawing on the clarity he brought to the most difficult questions of commercial law.

He was generous with his learning and remained intellectually vigorous into his nineties, continuing to teach at Oxford long after most would have set such things aside.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his family. He will be greatly missed.