Professor Alexander (Sandy) Anton was in many ways the founder of systematic scholarly exposition and analysis of private international law in Scotland. He was a leading law reformer in Scotland, the UK and globally. As a member and then consultant to the Scottish Law Commission for about 20 years between the mid 1960s and the mid 1980s, Sandy Anton made a major contribution to the reform of the law of Scotland, notably to its private international law. This work was often done in partnership with the Law Commission for England and Wales and led to UK-wide reform of private international law. He was influential in the domestication of the European Community regime on civil jurisdiction into the law of Scotland and the law for intra-UK disputes and on its scholarly analysis. Perhaps his greatest legacy is as a key UK delegate at the Hague Conference on Private International Law making very important treaties on recognition of divorces, and trusts, and being the Chair of the Special Commissions and Diplomatic Session that adopted the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 1980 which has over 100 Contracting States. The Hague Child Abduction Convention has done a lot to make global international family law a reality and in doing so has done much to make the lives of children unilaterally removed from their home country better by getting them promptly returned to their home country.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 23