Well known for his lively decisions and willingness to break with convention, he has had an especially large impact on the interpretation of contracts, shareholder actions in UK company law, in restricting tort liability for public authorities, human rights and intellectual property law, in particular patents.

Born on 8 May 1934, Leonard Hubert Hoffmann was a member of a Jewish family in Muizenberg, South Africa.

His father was a well-known solicitor who co-founded what has become Africa's largest law firm, Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs.

[2][4] He was educated at the University of Cape Town and then attended The Queen's College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, where he studied for the BCL degree and won the Vinerian Scholarship.

After being called to the Bar from Gray's Inn in 1964, Hoffmann became one of the most sought after and highly priced barristers of his generation and was quickly made a judge, having taken silk on 19 April 1977.

Hoffmann gave the leading judgment in Investors Compensation Scheme Ltd v West Bromwich Building Society, in which he set out five principles for interpreting contracts.

[15] Hoffmann's failure to declare his links with Amnesty International before ruling on whether Augusto Pinochet was immune from prosecution led to the unprecedented setting aside of a House of Lords judgment.

This seems to me to underline the need for the judicial arm of government to respect the decisions of ministers of the Crown on the question of whether support for terrorist activities in a foreign country constitutes a threat to national security.

However, in 2004, Hoffmann took a robust stand (joining the majority of judges in the decision) against the executive in the Belmarsh case, A v. SSHD [2004] UKHL 56.

It corrupts and degrades the state which uses it and the legal system which accepts it.A selection of his extra-judicial writings: