John Herbert McCluskey, Baron McCluskey (12 June 1929 – 20 July 2017) was a Scottish lawyer, judge and politician, who served as Solicitor General for Scotland, the country's junior Law Officer from 1974 to 1979, and as a Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of Scotland's Supreme Courts, from 1984 to 2004.

[3] McCluskey was briefly Standing Junior Counsel, a legal advisor to a government department, to the Ministry of Power in Scotland in 1962.

[17][18] In March 1999 he presided over the first trial held after the murder of Surjit Singh Chhokar at the Glasgow High Court, although that had only led to a conviction of assault.

[19] In July of that year, he addressed the Law Society of Scotland's 50th annual conference and suggested that a Royal Commission should look at sentencing of drug offenders.

[1] In 2007 Gordon Brown announced that McCluskey was one of the people who had been asked for advice on what changes Labour should make in handling donations.

[26] He sat on the Scottish Football Association (SFA)'s disciplinary appeal panels and in 2002 he suggested that they review their procedures around the use of video evidence.

[7][27] In 2005, during an interview with The Scotsman he put forward view that the drugs policy set by Westminster had been failing over many years and that heroin use could be treated as a medical problem rather than a legal one.

[30] The panel heard evidence and reported in September of that year, making recommendations that included the UK Supreme Court continuing to have a role in Scottish cases, but with limited jurisdiction.

[31] After the Leveson Inquiry published its report in November 2012, an Expert Panel was established in the Scottish Parliament to consider the regulation of the press in Scotland and McCluskey was invited to be chair.