Robert Goff, Baron Goff of Chieveley

Robert Lionel Archibald Goff, Baron Goff of Chieveley lived from November 12, 1926 to August 14, 2016 and was an English barrister and judge who served as Senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, the equivalent of today's President of the Supreme Court. He is best known for establishing unjust enrichment as a branch of English law and has been described as the greatest judge of modern times. He was the original co-author of Goff and Jones, the leading English law textbook on restitution and unjust enrichment, first published in 1966. He practiced as a commercial barrister from 1951 to 1975 before beginning his career as a judge, and was appointed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in 1986. As one of the few early academics turned judges, Goff long advocated a complementary view of the roles of legal academic and judge, and he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, First Class, for building bridges between judges in the United Kingdom and Germany.