Professor Margaret Brazier, known as Margot, died peacefully in Manchester Royal Infirmary on March 4 after living with Parkinson’s for 13 years.
Born in Preston in 1950 to Leslie Jacobs, a senior local government officer with Lancashire County Council, and his wife Mary, she was educated at Queen Mary’s Grammar School in Lytham St Annes and Manchester University where she spent her working life rising to be Professor and later Emeritus Professor of Law.
Margot edited legal text books, wrote ‘Medicine, Patients and the Law’ which, through seven editions, has become an essential handbook for lawyers and doctors, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997.
She chaired the Animal Procedures Committee of the Home Office from 1993 to 1998, the government’s Review of Surrogacy Arrangements from 1996 to 1998 and the Retained Organs Commission, set up in the wake of the Alder Hey scandal from 2001 to 2004.
Her fellow academic and close friend Brenda Lady Hale, the former President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, praised Margot’s ‘brilliant and fearless’ mind.
Married to fellow Manchester University Law Professor Rodney Brazier for more than 50 years they had one daughter Vicky, an actress, and lived in South Manchester.
Margot arrived at Manchester University aged 17 in 1968 and had to have special permission from the vice chancellor to attend because of her young age.
After three years of study she achieved a First Class LLB in law and in 1973 came top of the bar exams nationally. In 2008 she became a QC (Hon).
Starting work at the university in 1971, she spent more than 50 years there in total co-founding its Centre for Social Ethics and Policy.
She was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the British Academy.
Margot edited both Street on Torts and Clerk and Lindsell on Torts for many years and also wrote ‘Law and Healing, the History of a Stormy Marriage’ in 2023.
Lady Hale said: “I well remember Margot Jacobs turning up in my Constitutional Law lectures at the University of Manchester in 1968.
“She was younger than the rest. She was tiny. She had red hair. She was fearless. And she was brilliant.
“She went on to get a brilliant degree and join the Law Faculty staff where she remained, with her husband Rodney Brazier, until she retired.
“She partnered Professor Street in teaching the Law of Tort by the ‘case method’ borrowed from the United States – needing her to control and inspire a large class of sometimes rebellious students.
“But legal scholarship was branching out from the tramlines of the traditional subjects and looking at how different areas of law combined to operate in a particular social or economic context.
“She pioneered the study of medical and healthcare law. She inspired generations of scholars to do the same.
“And she took her expertise into real world bodies, examining, for example, the use of animals in research, surrogacy, and organ retention.
“All of this she did while remaining devoted to her family, her home and her friends, among whom I am so proud to have been numbered.“
Former Manchester University School of Law administrator Ruth Hicks said: “Margot always had time for students and time for colleagues – senior and junior – time because she really cared about everyone she worked with.
“It simply didn’t matter at all to her, who it was who asked for her help or advice.
“Despite her stellar national status, her major importance in her field, she had time – or would make time – for people of all kinds, dropping into her office.”
Her brother Bill said: “Margot was a wonderful sister, wife, mother and aunt. In her latter years living with Parkinson’s she demonstrated immense bravery and resilience.
“A truly remarkable woman she will be sorely missed by all who knew her.”
She was also editor of the Medical Law Review from 2004 to 2011, the first female president of the Society of Public Teachers of Law from 1997 to 1999, a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Board from 1998-2001, and chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on The Ethics of Prolonging Life in Fetuses and the Newborn from 2004 to 2006.
Margot leaves a husband Rodney, a daughter Vicky, a brother Bill and two nieces Connie and Thea.
