In a distinguished judicial career Lord Scarman won an assured place in the annals of English law as the outstandingly successful chairman of the Law Commission during the first seven years of its life, and he went on to become a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1977 to 1986. A man of radical and progressive instincts, he also made a notable contribution to public life in his conduct of several important inquiries and he was an eloquent protagonist of a Bill of Rights for the United Kingdom.

But in no instance was his liberal humanity and understanding of social issues better displayed than in his remarkable report on the Brixton riots of 1981, which had shaken the country to the core and seemed to many to indicate an impending breakdown in the social fabric of inner cities, as well as a final proof that a policy of racial integration had utterly failed.

On the night of April 10, 1981, two police officers in Brixton were attempting to help a black youth who had been stabbed, when they were surrounded by a hostile crowd. In an atmosphere in which the local community was already feeling persecuted by a police operation called "Swamp", which had led to the arbitrary stopping and searching of large numbers of young black men, the atmosphere turned ugly and the confrontation quickly escalated. A night of rioting ensued in which 300 people were injured, houses and other premises were damaged, and vehicles were wrecked.

A feeling akin to panic gripped large areas of the country, accompanied by an emotion (among those, that is, who were not of the "I told you so" persuasion) of despair that so many years of patient and positive progress in the field of race relations in this country, since the Notting Hill riot of 1958, had been apparently cast away in one night.

Appointed to chair the inquiry into the riots, Scarman demonstrated not only great even-handedness, but an impressive grasp of social conditions in Brixton, and a readiness to apportion blame to the forces of law and order without in any way seeming to curry favour with the black community at the expense of the police.

While praising the police for their moderation on the night, in the face of such a sudden and widespread outbreak of violence on the streets, he pointed to the "racial disadvantage that is a fact of British life" as being its root cause. And his investigation concluded that the riots had been the result of a crowd reaction to what it believed - rightly or wrongly - was yet another instance of the harassment of black people. Scarman called for a new emphasis on community policing and he urged the the Government to tackle the fundamental causes of unrest - racial disadvantage and a disproportionately high level of unemployment among young black men.

The justness of this analysis seemed almost of itself to have a healing effect on a raw public mood, in which opinion had become polarised. Without doubt the Scarman report was a milestone on the road back to the establishment of much better relations between black and white people in the country at large.

Leslie George Scarman was educated at Radley College and Brasenose College, Oxford, of which he later became an honorary fellow. At Oxford, he obtained a first in Honour Moderations in 1932, and in Classical Greats in 1934. He was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1936. War service in the RAF from 1940 to 1945 interrupted his practice. He rose to the rank of wing commander and served as personal staff officer to Lord Tedder during the Mediterranean and North-West European campaigns. He maintained his interest in the RAF after demobilisation, eventually succeeding Tedder as president of the Malcolm clubs. After the war he returned to the Bar. In 1957 he took silk, and until 1961, when he was appointed a judge of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, he enjoyed a large practice. In that division Scarman proved to be a courteous, humane and, when the occasion presented itself, scholarly judge.

A turning point in Scarman's judicial career came with his appointment in 1965 as the first chairman of the Law Commission. The commission was set up by the Labour Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner, with a brief to rationalise statute law and to propose amendments and codifications in all areas of the law. Not surprisingly, the experiment (as it then appeared) was viewed with considerable concern by many lawyers and judges and by a large part of the Conservative Party. That concern was not eased when it became apparent that most of the commission's staff, appointed by Lord Gardiner, had decidedly left-wing views. Scarman found himself, for the first time, at the centre of public controversy. He did not find the experience disagreeable. It is a tribute to Scarman that the Law Commission is now greatly valued by the judiciary and by Parliament. Its reports are widely respected and its draft Bills are not infrequently enacted with little or no amendment by Parliament.

The success of the commission was in no small part due to Scarman's great talent for public relations. Although it was his appointment to the commission which revealed that talent, it was his work during his tenure of office in the drier field of statutory law reform which will, perhaps, be considered in years to come as his greatest contribution to British life.

In August 1969 Scarman was appointed chairman of the tribunal set up to investigate the civil disturbances in Northern Ireland between March and August 1969. It was the first of four large public inquiries over which he was to preside. The inquiry lasted for more than two years and eventually produced a 250-page report. The findings were not altogether surprising. Indeed, all four of the reports which he was to issue after these inquiries were, to some extent, predictable.

But he had shown himself to be an accomplished chairman who could be relied upon by governments of all political persuasions to ease public disquiet about deeply distressing events by his impartial conduct of a painstakingly meticulous inquiry. The other inquiries over which he presided were the Red Lion Square Inquiry of 1975 and the Grunwick Inquiry of 1977.