John Hopkins
Cambridge Law don and unabashed Tory who educated scores of eminent future judges and QCS
JOHN HOPKINS, who has died aged 81, was a Fellow in Law at Downing College, Cambridge, for 43 years, during which time he taught thousands of Law students and single-handedly transformed the College’s reputation in legal education. Downing was founded in 1800 “for students in law, physic and the other useful arts and learning”. When Hopkins joined the Fellowship in 1961, its reputation for the teaching of Law was unspectacular. At that time no sitting judge or practising Queen’s Counsel had read Law at the College. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, however, a party was thrown by more than 80 judges and QCS, all of whom had been taught by Hopkins at Downing; such was his influence on the College and the legal profession.
As an academic he was almost exclusively a teacher rather than a researcher, using the intimacy of the Cambridge small-group supervision system to instil precision of legal thought and critical analysis in his students. Law students from Downing and many other colleges were supervised by him in his room, which was swamped by piles of papers.
Sitting in his armchair, with pipe in hand, his method was to discuss the law and events of the day, while progressing through a complex procedure to light his pipe, which required cleaning, filling, lighting and drawing repeatedly, with the match being extinguished by a flick of the wrist and thrown into a bin. Usually the process was unsuccessful and would be repeated many times. Sometimes the match was not extinguished and the bin caught light. It would be taken outside to smoulder while the supervision continued without comment.
Hopkins taught Constitutional Law, Roman Law, International Law and Equity at Cambridge, both in supervisions and in lectures, the latter while wearing his ancient gown; and for many years he taught the Law of Trusts to student barristers on the Bar Vocational Course. His approach to teaching was to provide structure to complex bodies of law and to provide students with the intellectual tools to apply, analyse and criticise the law.
He particularly engaged with the real-life stories underpinning leading cases and emphasised the vital importance of using words properly. His favourite example, sometimes used as a question in admissions interviews, concerned the interpretation of a statutory provision that the Home Secretary had “reasonable cause to believe” the subject of a decision of the House of Lords in 1941. Could this be interpreted to mean that the Home Secretary believed he had reasonable cause to believe? The House of Lords held it could. Hopkins took great delight in dismantling the reasoning.
As a don he was both idiosyncratic and personable. A great raconteur, he had a penchant for poor jokes and puns which were repeated endlessly, often reflecting his political predilections, even though as the years passed undergraduates were increasingly unaware of the references (often thinking that there had once been a London airport called “Thatcherow” and even a newspaper called “The Daily Torygraph”).
At times politically incorrect, he often said that there was no point in having prejudices if you did not air them. But the needs of his students were always paramount and many were in his debt, sometimes literally, for the support and advice he gave them when facing fraught personal circumstances.
He always took great pride in mapping the legal careers of his Law students. The careers of many judges, barristers and partners of City law firms were determined at a meeting in Hopkins’s room, with a recommendation that they should go to the Bar or to a particular firm of solicitors. Some did not heed this advice and went into careers outside the Law, as diplomats, civil servants, politicians, journalists, clerics and performers: John Cleese was one of his first students.
Hopkins was also for many years an admissions tutor, and he interviewed thousands of prospective students. When asked what he was looking for when making admission decisions, he would respond by referring to “Squirrels Nutkin” rather than “Eeyores”, seeking those who were “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”.
Classic children’s literature was important to him: he ensured that there were two copies of Winnie-thepooh in the College Library, one in Latin. He was elected the first President of the University’s Pooh Sticks society, the creation of which he had instigated.
John Alan Hopkins was born on December 16 1936 at Hemsworth, Yorkshire. He attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield until the age of 12, when his family moved to Pontypridd. He took great pride in this mixed Yorkshire and Welsh upbringing.
Following National Service with the Royal Artillery at Oswestry he read Law at Queens’ College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1960 he read for the LLB, his studies focused on international law. In 1961 he was elected to a Research Fellowship at Downing College, where he was mentored by Professor Clive Parry, the Whewell Professor in International Law, who had a profound influence on him – and who instigated his meeting with Cherry Busbridge, another researcher in international law, whom Hopkins married in 1964.
The joint influence of Hopkins and Parry on the study of Law at the college was reflected much later by the creation of the Hopkins Parry Law Fellowship, which was endowed with money raised from his former students.
In 1965 Hopkins was elected an Official Fellow of Downing College and appointed to a university lectureship. He served as Director of Studies in Law for 35 years and as Senior Tutor for 16. In 1981 he was elected as an honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple.
He was an ardent Tory, who took pleasure in being described as born not only a Conservative but middleaged. He was a technophobe, who never succumbed to using a computer or email. He was strongly opposed to membership of what became the European Union and took great delight in the prospect of Brexit. His approach to administration was to resist change at all costs, preferring decisions to be made behind the scenes rather than in committee.
Although reactionary by inclination, he was always ready to admit when he was wrong. In his early years as Senior Tutor he expressed significant reservations about the admission of women to Downing, but soon realised his mistake and considered this to have been “the most admirable and natural change in the life of the College”.
He had many interests outside the law, especially cricket (he wore his MCC tie at every opportunity), music (particularly Wagner and Mozart), biography and 19th century literature (he would often quote large chunks of Trollope). But his greatest interest, in addition to his family on whom he doted, was his former students. For him personal success in legal scholarship or practice was less important than the pride of success in those he had educated.
That was reflected back as pride that they had been taught by the man they affectionately called “Hoppo”. To celebrate his 80th birthday a dinner was held in the College hall and a photograph unveiled of him supervising, in armchair, pipe in hand, explaining the law to his students. The picture has been placed outside his old room, which is now named after him.
John Hopkins is survived by his wife Cherry, and by their daughter and son.
John Hopkins, born December 16 1936, died September 19 2018